Footprints without Feet
Invisibility and science
Evaluate Griffin and explain the science of transparency.
Use or misuse? Griffin's discovery was brilliant, but what did he do with it?
- arson: he set fire to his landlord's house;
- theft: in the store and the clergyman's study;
- assault and robbery: of the Drury Lane shopkeeper;
- violence against Jaffers.
He is a brilliant but unethical scientist: he had knowledge but no conscience.
Would you want to be invisible? You could go anywhere unseen. But think of the problems Griffin had: cold (no clothes), hunger, loneliness, and the temptation to do wrong when no one can see you.
Invisible things are real. Many real things can't be seen: gravity, magnetism, electric fields, and atoms and germs, which are too small to see. Imagine if you could see them.
Why is glass transparent? Glass and water let light pass through: they don't absorb or scatter much visible light. A living body does both, so a person can't simply become transparent. Still, science-fiction writers have sometimes turned out to be prophets: their 'impossible' ideas later came true.
Practise this lesson
Questions that get harder as you improve, a Tutor that helps without giving the answer away, and progress you can see. Free for every learner.
No account, no email address. Opens the real product.