The Crookes’s Radiometer is a light vane

Abstract

One of the most important experiments of the 19th century makes a connection between electromagnetism and mechanics in a direct way. In the so called “Crooke’s Radiometer” the light, pulling vanes, surprises us giving the immediate perception of its energy. The public perceives that is the black side which receives the greater action. The school and the universitarie’s students, they try to understand why it is so, but doubts remain. In this article we make a review of those doubts at three levels: school, graduation and post-graduation. The usual thinking employs electromagnetism, thermodynamics, but we do not know any article which who may had included friction on the analysis. We show here the influence of friction by performing a simple experiment.