Growing Up

Abstract

When Mino was barely three, I started to take him with me to my laboratory at the University of Göttingen in Germany. It was in the old Chemistry building, dating back to the late 1700s, next to the tree-filled park that encircles the old town. The ceilings were high, the wooden floor planks dark from thousand chemicals spilled by generations of students. I set up a low table for Mino in the corner of my second floor office with large windows and tree branches touching the glass panes. I gave Mino a prism the size of his little hand so that he could catch the specks of sunlight falling through the leaves outside the window. He saw how the sunlight spread into colorful bands. I showed him the spectra of an incandescent bulb, a fluorescent tube, a Bunsenburner flame, and a high voltage discharge through air—all distinctly different from the spectrum of sunlight.