TRANSCRIPT
From the Cumberland Gap to the Atlantic Ocean, this is Virginia Water Radio for the week of August 4, 2014.
This week, we drop in on the annual convention of the
International Association for Water Words.
As a rain shower diminishes, the word for a favorite air and water
phenomenon is on many different tongues.
Sound imaginary? Well, just have
a listen for about 15 seconds.
SOUND
If you know any Hawaiian, Chinese, Swahili, Italian,
Hungarian, German, or Swedish, you may have recognized “rainbow” as the water word getting all the attention. Whatever language you speak, your words
probably take on a little more air of excitement when you spot a rainbow’s
sky-crossing bands of colors. The colors
we perceive demonstrate that visible, white light is actually a spectrum of different wavelengths of light,
ranging from the longest wavelength on the red end to the shortest on the
violet end. Colors appear in rainbows
because raindrops bend different colors’ wavelengths at different angles. Visible light, in turn, is one tiny part of
the overall electromagnetic spectrum,
from long-wavelength radio waves to short-wavelength gamma rays. This reality of physics, combined with
chemistry, has great application to water analysis. Spectrophotometers
can measure a substance in water based on how the substance’s chemical
structure absorbs radiation at a given wavelength.
Rainbows are fun worldwide; the radiation
principles behind them are fundamental, universally. Thanks to friends from Blacksburg, Virginia,
and from China for lending their voices to this week’s episode; and just in
case you’ve forgotten your rainbow colors, here are a few more friends to
remind you.
SOUND
For other water sounds and music, and for more Virginia
water information, visit our Web site at virginiawaterradio.org,
or call us at (540) 231-5463. From the
Virginia Water Resources Research Center in Blacksburg, I’m Alan Raflo,
thanking you for listening, and wishing you health, wisdom, and good water.
SHOW NOTES
[All Internet
addresses mentioned were functional as of 7/31/14]
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| Rainbow over Blacksburg, Virginia, April 25, 2014 |
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| Rainbow over the Beartooth Range in southern Montana, June 29, 2014. Photo by Karin Solberg, used with permission. |
Acknowledgments
Virginia Water Radio
thanks friends from Blacksburg, Va., and Beijing, China, for recording
rainbow-related words; and David Mitchem, Virginia Tech Department of Forest
Resources and Environmental Conservation, for providing information on spectroscopic
methods of water analysis.
Sources for this
episode
Thomas Engel. Quantum Chemistry & Spectroscopy, 3rd
ed. Pearson Education Inc.,
Glenview, Illinois, 2013.
National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center, “Spectra and What Scientists Learn from Them,” http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/how_l1/spectra.html.
National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), “The Space Place Web” site, “Why is the Sky Blue?” at http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/blue-sky/en/.
National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, “About Rainbows,” online at http://eo.ucar.edu/rainbows/.
Michael J. Suess, ed. Examination of Water for Pollution Control—Vol. 1. Pergamon Press, Oxford, England, 1982.
National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center, “Spectra and What Scientists Learn from Them,” http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/how_l1/spectra.html.
National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), “The Space Place Web” site, “Why is the Sky Blue?” at http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/blue-sky/en/.
National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, “About Rainbows,” online at http://eo.ucar.edu/rainbows/.
Michael J. Suess, ed. Examination of Water for Pollution Control—Vol. 1. Pergamon Press, Oxford, England, 1982.
Virginia Water News
and Other Information
For
news, events, and resources relevant to Virginia's water resources, grouped
into categories, please visit the Virginia
Water Central News Grouper, available online at http://vawatercentralnewsgrouper.wordpress.com/.
