SIR C.V. RAMAN- THE MAN WHO SAW THE SEA DIFFERENTLY
September 1921 SS Narkunda, Mediterranean Sea. Figure 1 : Sir C.V. Raman, a simple man with his signature white turban and sharp, thoughtful eyes. A fairly tall, young, handsome man was watching the seas from the ship's deck. The sea stretched endlessly before him, sparkling under the sun — but something kept bothering him. Back then the idea was that sea is blue because it reflects the skies. Lord Rayleigh, a legendary figure in physics stated this principle and according to him tiny particles in the air scatter sunlight, and the blue part of light gets scattered the most — that’s why the sky looks blue. And since the sea reflects the sky, the sea must look blue too. Simple, right? The man we mentioned about earlier in the text was not convinced about this idea and decided to conduct some onboard experiments to validate his queries. He pulled out a small, portable device called a spectroscope (a tool that helps break light into different colors) and a Nicol prism (which helps fi...
