Tag: prism

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Lessons from a Prism

Lessons from a Prism

It seems that God has built into the natural world all kinds of reminders about the nature of our relationship with Him. We repeatedly talk about how intelligence, order, and design are a natural part of the creation around us. One of the best examples of that is what we call lessons from a prism.

If you take sunlight and shine it on a prism (a solid triangular chunk of glass), the sunlight is broken up into all the colors of the rainbow. Each of those colors has a specific function In living things due to their different energies. Red has the lowest energy of visible light, and violet has the highest. The other colors have energies in between from red to orange to yellow to green to blue to violet. Green has the highest energy of light that makes it through the Earth’s atmosphere to reach us. Plants are green to reflect that highest energy, thus protecting the plants. Higher energies of light are scattered away from the Earth’s surface, making our sky blue.

The parallel to Jesus is astounding. In John 8:12, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” This idea is repeated over and over. (See John 1:4-5; 1 John 1:5-7.) Like natural light, the “light of the world” is made up of many things – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. We see all of those things in the lives of the followers of Jesus. The most energetic of these is love. That is why 1 Corinthians 13 is devoted to describing the unique power of the kind of love Jesus brings to the world. The Greek word used in that passage is “agape,” the most unique form of the five types of love the Greek language describes.

The lessons from a prism do not end with visible light. In the spectrum of physical light, some frequencies are not visible to our eyes. There are ultraviolet, Xrays, and gamma rays, all of which have incredible power beyond that of visible light. In the “light of the world” we have the operation of the Holy Spirit, who has power beyond anything we can imagine. He can make changes in each of us not only now, but also when time has ended.

On the other end of the physical spectrum, we have less energetic forms of light beyond red. These include infrared and all kinds of radio waves. Jesus came to the Earth to bring a special kind of light to all people. The problem with this part of the “light of the world” is that it involves words and the written page. People could and did reject what Jesus taught. Today people not only reject it but misinterpret and misrepresent what Jesus wants us to do. This light is less effective because humans are involved in making it work.

The ultimate future of the cosmos is that all light will be made into one. Second Peter 3:10-13 tells us that the elements will melt with fervent heat, and everything physical will be dissolved. We see confirmation of this in the equation E =mc^2. Peter goes on to say that this will lead to a New Heaven and a New Earth. Revelation chapters 21 and 22 describe some of the properties of this new spiritual existence. Paul had a vision of it in 2 Corinthians 12:3-5 and said that any words to describe it would be unspeakable.

Lessons from a prism remind us that we are the “light of the world” (Matthew 5:14-16). Understanding the magnificence of the spiritual spectrum seen in Christ Jesus gives us the tools to carry that light to those in darkness.

— John N. Clayton © 2020

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What Is Light?

What Is Light?
A question that scientists cannot fully solve is the nature of light. What is light? Is it a wave or is it a particle?

Light has wave properties. It travels in straight lines, but it can be reflected from objects like mirrors, or refracted as it travels through objects like water or glass. Different frequencies of light waves are bent in varying amounts by a prism to show the colors of the spectrum. Light, like sound waves, can travel through gases (air), through liquids (water), or through solids (glass).

But light can also do something that waves normally cannot do. Light can travel through empty space. Because of that and other properties of light, we say that light consists of particles called photons, which act as if they have mass. Photons can knock electrons out of crystals in what we call the photoelectric effect. That’s how solar panels generate electricity from sunlight. So light in motion seems to have mass since it can pass through a vacuum or knock electrons out of their orbit. However, when we stop light, it has no mass. If you shine a light on an object, the light doesn’t make the object any heavier.

What is light? While science ponders that question, we use light every day, and we couldn’t live without it. The question of how light can have properties of both a wave and a particle has baffled scientists for centuries. Even though that answer to that question may never be fully understood, we continue to enjoy and use it every day.

We can see that the simple phrase “let there be light” (Genesis 1:3) is an incredibly complex command.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

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Saharan Silver Ants

Saharan Silver Ants
The survival of living things in extreme conditions is always fascinating. There are places on Earth, such as the Sahara Desert, where the temperature on the ground can soar to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Even in that extreme heat there are living things functioning very well in conditions that would be lethal to most forms of life.

Extreme survival is a way of life for the Saharan silver ants (Cataglyphis bombycina). The predators of these ants are desert lizards that retreat into their burrows in the heat of the day. Some of the ants keep watch to let the others know when the lizards are gone. Then the ant colony makes its food-search expedition. They come out into the full Sun and intense heat to scavenge animal carcasses. The picture shows them devouring an engorged camel tick.

The question is, “How do they survive the heat?” They have longer legs than most ants, and that keeps their bodies farther from the hot sand. They also travel across the sand at high speed (2.3 feet or 0.7 meters per second) using only four of their six legs to keep fewer feet on the ground. Also, their bodies produce heat-shock proteins that help their cells cope with the stress of the high temperature. Many animals produce heat-shock proteins, but not until they are exposed to extreme heat. The Saharan silver ants are programmed to produce those proteins before heat exposure to prepare them for what’s ahead.

Even with those adaptations, they are still exposed to the direct rays of the Sun. Scientists used electron microscopes to find the secret of the Saharan silver ant’s survival. The ants are covered with microscopic hairs that are not round or oval in cross-section like most hairs. They have a triangle shape to act as prisms. This shape reflects both the visible and infrared (heat) energy from the Sun away from their bodies. Because of these tiny prisms, the ants display a metallic shine. They look like metallic beads rolling quickly over the desert sand. No other desert creature has this form of reflection. Saharan silver ants are among the most heat-resistant creatures in the world.

Like many things in nature, engineers are looking into how we can imitate the prism method of these ants to protect humans from the dangers of extreme heat. Designing something that can reflect the heat this efficiently requires a deep understanding of optics and the nature of light and heat energy. The wisdom of the Creator shines brightly in the reflected light coming from the Saharan silver ants.
–John N. Clayton and Roland Earnst © 2017