Optical Theories Based on Lectures Delivered Before the Calcutta University

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University Press, 1917 - 181 pages
 

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Page 17 - Are not the rays of light very small bodies emitted from shining substances? For such bodies will pass through uniform mediums in right lines without bending into the shadow, which is the nature of the rays of light.
Page 61 - To fill all space with a new medium whenever any new phenomenon is to be explained is by no means philosophical, but if the study of two different branches of science has independently suggested the idea of a medium, and if the properties which must be attributed to the medium in order to account for electromagnetic phenomena are of the same kind as those which we attribute to the luminiferous medium in order to account for the phenomena of light, the evidence fer the physical existence of the medium...
Page 15 - Defn. The return of the disposition of any ray to be reflected I will call its Fits of easy reflection, and those of its disposition to be transmitted its Fits of easy transmission, and the space it passes between every return and the next return the interval of its Fits.
Page 111 - The consideration of the action of magnetism on polarized light leads, as we have seen, to the conclusion that in a medium under the action of magnetic force something belonging to the same mathematical class as an angular velocity, whose axis is in the direction of the magnetic force, forms a part of the phenomenon.
Page 16 - ... and are not these vibrations propagated from the point of incidence to great distances ? And do they not overtake the rays of light, and by overtaking them successively, do they not put them into the fits of easy reflexion and easy transmission described above ? For if the rays endeavour.
Page 16 - Are not the Rays of Light in passing by the edges and sides of Bodies, bent several times backwards and forwards, with a motion like that of an Eel? And do not the three Fringes of colour'd Light above-mention'd arise from three such bendings?
Page 34 - ... may be reconciled. Suppose a small quantity of glue dissolved in a little water, so as to form a stiff jelly. This jelly forms in fact an elastic solid : it may be constrained, and it will resist constraint, and return to its original form when the constraining force is removed, by virtue of its elasticity; but if we constrain it too far it will break. Suppose now the quantity of water in which the glue is dissolved...
Page 15 - ... every ray of light in its passage through any refracting surface is put into a certain transient constitution or state, which in the progress of the ray returns at equal intervals and disposes the ray at every return to be easily refracted through the next refracting surface and between the returns to be easily reflected by it.
Page 18 - In the second place, it is to be supposed that the ether is a vibrating medium like air, only the vibrations far more swift and minute; those of air made by a man's ordinary voice succeeding one another at more than half a foot or a foot distance, but those of ether at a less distance than the hundred-thousandth part of an inch.

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