Melde's Experiment - History

History

Wave phenomena in nature have been investigated for centuries, some being some of the most controverted themes in the history of science, and so the case is with the wave nature of light. In the 17th century, Sir Isaac Newton described light through a corpuscular theory. The English physicist Thomas Young later contrasted Newton's theories in the 18th century and established the scientific basis upon which rest the wave theories. At the end of the 19th century, at the peak of the Second Industrial Revolution, the creation of electricity as the technology of the era offered a new contribution to the wave theories. This advance allowed Franz Melde to recognize the phenomena of wave interference and the creation of standing waves. Later, the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell in his study of the wave nature of light succeeded in expressing waves and the electromagnetic spectrum in a mathematical formula.