-
Tyndall and Diamagnetism
In 1849, before John Tyndall ever finished his PhD, he was accumulating data on his experiments on Diamagnetism. Diamagnetism at the time was thought to be inferior to Para magnetism and ferromagnetism. However Tyndall's experiments challenged Michael Faraday's discovery of diamagnetism. Tyndall's model showed magnetic forces acting in couples, depending on their material makeup. This changed the way diamagnetism was viewed then on. -
1859 - Tyndall and Infrared radiation
In the year of 1859, John Tyndall demonstrated that gases and water are capable of absorbing heat. Tyndall accomplished this by placing boiling water into a copper cube, which then became a heat source. For those of you that don't know, This is now known as infrared radiation, which has many applications from energy to video applications. Possibly the most notable being the eventual discovery of how infrared radiation affects the Greenhouse gases. -
"The Tyndall effect" - 1869
John Tyndall is noted to have been an avid mountaineer in the Alps. He would travel to the mountains to study natural phenomena such as glaciers and why the sky was blue at midday but red in the evening. Basically, Tyndall filled a simple glass tube with smoke and stuck a light at one end. Doing this made the smoke on one end of the tube blue, and the other red. Tyndall deduced from this that the color of the sky is due to light reflecting on particles in the atmosphere. -
Tyndallization - 1870-1876
All of Tyndall's study and research up to this point led him to the discovery of a process of sterilization know as "Tyndallization". When Tyndall observed the way molecules in the air scattered light, and how water and gases were capable of Infrared radiation; he deduced that it was possible to sterilize food by boiling it for at least 15 minutes a day for 3 days. When placed under a microscope, John noted that there were far less bacteria on the sterilized food. -
Short video