Optics: The True Nature of Light

24:34

6 Oct 2015

History of Science

Jim al-Khalili

Jim al-Khalili leads this first episode of a 6-part documentary on science and its history in the Middle East.  He looks at the works and processes of several 11th-century Islamicate scientists who worked on optics and the nature of light.  He contextualizes this in today’s Middle East with a visit with contemporary scientists both in and from the Middle East.

The episode discusses Ibn al-Haytham (d. ca. 1040 CE), “the father of modern optics”.  2015 marked the one thousandth anniversary of Ibn al-Haytham’s seven-volume work, Kitāb al-Manāẓir (The Book of Optics).  Al-Khalili recreates a pinhole camera (camera obscura) at Cambridge University, and shows how it led Ibn Haytham to discoveries about the nature of light.  Ibn l-Haytham was noted for “putting mathematical flesh” on the bones provided through careful experimentation.

Al-Khalili also discusses Ibn Sahl (d. 1000), another scientist who worked during the Abbasid era, who correctly described “Snell’s law of refraction” long before Willebrord Snellius published it in seventeenth century Europe.

Also discussed is Ibn Muʿādh (d. 1079, al-Andalus) who worked on the height of the atmosphere using both optics and geometry.

The historical material is linked with contemporary studies through SESAME, Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East, an electron accelerator in Jordon.  As al-Khalili walks around the site, he meets with a few scientists and talks about their experiments.  He meets with researchers/curators from the Museum of the History of Science and Technology in Islam, in Istanbul, Turkey.  He discusses the use of lasers for transmitting energy.

This series, first broadcast in the fall of 2015, focuses on topics that have both historical and contemporary components.  Many of the contemporary segments were filmed in Doha, Qatar, home for the al-Jazeera network.

Evaluation:

Islam:  The material on Islam is within the bounds of what Muslims have historically understood as acceptable.

Science:  The science presented is consistent with a consensus of contemporary scientists.

History:  The history presented is consistent with a consensus of contemporary historians.