Opticks : $b or, A treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections and colours of lightNewton, Isaac
Science
Opticks : $b or, A treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections and colours of light
Newton, Isaac
Optics -- Early works to 1800
And from these Measures I seem to gather this Rule: That the Thickness
of the Air is proportional to the Secant of an Angle, whose Sine is a
certain mean Proportional between the Sines of Incidence and Refraction.
And that mean Proportional, so far as by these Measures I can determine
it, is the first of an hundred and six arithmetical mean Proportionals
between those Sines counted from the bigger Sine, that is, from the Sine
of Refraction when the Refraction is made out of the Glass into the
Plate of Air, or from the Sine of Incidence when the Refraction is made
out of the Plate of Air into the Glass.
_Obs._ 8. The dark Spot in the middle of the Rings increased also by the
Obliquation of the Eye, although almost insensibly. But, if instead of
the Object-glasses the Prisms were made use of, its Increase was more
manifest when viewed so obliquely that no Colours appear'd about it. It
was least when the Rays were incident most obliquely on the interjacent
Air, and as the obliquity decreased it increased more and more until the
colour'd Rings appear'd, and then decreased again, but not so much as it
increased before. And hence it is evident, that the Transparency was
not only at the absolute Contact of the Glasses, but also where they had
some little Interval. I have sometimes observed the Diameter of that
Spot to be between half and two fifth parts of the Diameter of the
exterior Circumference of the red in the first Circuit or Revolution of
Colours when view'd almost perpendicularly; whereas when view'd
obliquely it hath wholly vanish'd and become opake and white like the
other parts of the Glass; whence it may be collected that the Glasses
did then scarcely, or not at all, touch one another, and that their
Interval at the perimeter of that Spot when view'd perpendicularly was
about a fifth or sixth part of their Interval at the circumference of
the said red.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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