Spectroscopy Quotes

• The whole subject of the X rays is opening out wonderfully, Bragg has of course got in ahead of us, and so the credit all belongs to him, but that does not make it less interesting. We find that an X ray bulb with a platinum target gives out a sharp line spectrum of five wavelengths which the crystal separates out as if it were a diffraction grating. In this way one can get pure monochromatic X rays. Tomorrow we search for the spectra of other elements. There is here a whole new branch of spectroscopy, which is sure to tell one much about the nature of an atom.

  Henry Moseley

  Science, Giving, Interesting

  "H. G. J. Moseley: The Life and Letters of an English Physicist, 1887-1915" by J. L. Heilbron, University of California Press, (p. 205), 1974.

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• Trying to determine the structure of a protein by UV spectroscopy was like trying to determine the structure of a piano by listening to the sound it made while being dropped down a flight of stairs.

  Francis Crick

  Science, Engineering, Piano

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• An attempt to study the evolution of living organisms without reference to cytology would be as futile as an account of stellar evolution which ignored spectroscopy.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Stars, Science, Would Be

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• In a certain sense I made a living for five or six years out of that one star [υ Sagittarii] and it is still a fascinating, not understood, star. It's the first star in which you could clearly demonstrate an enormous difference in chemical composition from the sun. It had almost no hydrogen. It was made largely of helium, and had much too much nitrogen and neon. It's still a mystery in many ways ... But it was the first star ever analysed that had a different composition, and I started that area of spectroscopy in the late thirties.

  Jesse L. Greenstein

  Stars, Science, Years

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• The research included neutron resonance spectroscopy, the angular distribution of pion elastic and inelastic scattering on nuclei with optical model fitting.

  James Rainwater

  Research, Neutrons, Nucleus

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• Spectroscopy can probably answer the question, 'Is there anybody out there?' Are we alone?

  Garik Israelian

  Answers

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• Solving Problems with NMR Spectroscopy is a very welcome addition to the existing literature. It fulfills a real need for an up-to-date and authoritatively written introduction for students and practitioners of NMR.

  Richard Ernst

  Real, Needs, Literature

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• A stars rich in europium; of distant galaxies analyzed through the collective light of a hundred billion constituent stars. Astronomical spectroscopy is an almost magical technique. It amazes me still. Auguste Comte picked a particularly unfortunate example.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Light, Technique

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.117, Ballantine Books

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• It's not very fun to do spectroscopy.

  Garik Israelian

  Fun

  "How spectroscopy could reveal alien life". TED conference, www.ted.com. July 2009.

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• I am troubled by the lack of common sense regarding carbon dioxide emissions. Our greatest greenhouse gas is water. Atmospheric spectroscopy reveals why water has a 95 percent and CO2 a 3.6 percent contribution to the 'greenhouse effect.' Carbon dioxide emissions worldwide each year total 3.2 billion tons. That equals about 0.0168 percent of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration of about 19 trillion tons. This results in a 0.00064 percent increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number.

  Michael Myers

  Small Numbers, Years, Common Sense

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