Miscellanea Curiosa, Vol. 1: Containing a collection of some of the principal phaenomena in nature, accounted for by the greatest philosophers of this age
History
Miscellanea Curiosa, Vol. 1: Containing a collection of some of the principal phaenomena in nature, accounted for by the greatest philosophers of this age
Natural history; Science -- Early works to 1800; Voyages and travels -- Early works to 1800
They were terminated at the sides with streight Lines, but at the ends,
the decay of Light was so gradual, that it was difficult to determine
justly, what was their Figure; yet they seem'd _Semicircular_.
Comparing the length of this colour'd _Spectrum_ with its breadth, I
found it about five times greater; a disproportion so extravagant, that
it excited me to a more than ordinary Curiosity of examining, from
whence it might proceed. I could scarce think, that the various
thickness of the Glass, or the termination with shadow or darkness,
could have any Influence on Light to produce such an effect; yet I
thought it not amiss, first to examine those Circumstances, and so try'd
what would happen by transmitting Light through parts of the Glass of
divers thicknesses, or through holes in the Window of divers bignesses,
or by setting the Prism without, so that the Light might pass through
it, and be refracted before it was terminated by the hole: But I found
none of those Circumstances material. The fashion of the Colours was, in
all these Cases, the same.
Then I suspected, whether by any unevenness in the Glass, or other
contingent Irregularity, these Colours might be thus dilated. And to try
this, I took another Prism like the former, and so plac'd it, that the
Light passing through them both, might be refracted contrary ways, and
so by the latter return'd into that Course, from which the former had
diverted it. For, by this means, I thought the _regular_ effects of the
first Prism would be destroy'd by the second Prism, but the _irregular_
ones more augmented by the multiplicity of Refractions. The Event was,
that the Light, which by the first Prism was diffused into an _oblong_
Form, was, by the second, reduc'd into an _orbicular_ one, with as much
regularity, as when it did not at all pass through them. So that
whatever was the cause of that length, 'twas not any contingent
Irregularity.
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