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
If the Water was not very tenacious, the black Spots would break forth
in the white, without any sensible intervention of the blue. And
sometimes they would break forth within the precedent yellow, or red, or
perhaps within the blue of the second order, before the intermediate
Colours had time to display themselves.
By this description you may perceive how great an affinity these Colours
have with those of Air described in the fourth Observation, although set
down in a contrary order, by reason that they begin to appear when the
Bubble is thickest, and are most conveniently reckon'd from the lowest
and thickest part of the Bubble upwards.
_Obs._ 19. Viewing in several oblique Positions of my Eye the Rings of
Colours emerging on the top of the Bubble, I found that they were
sensibly dilated by increasing the obliquity, but yet not so much by far
as those made by thinn'd Air in the seventh Observation. For there they
were dilated so much as, when view'd most obliquely, to arrive at a part
of the Plate more than twelve times thicker than that where they
appear'd when viewed perpendicularly; whereas in this case the thickness
of the Water, at which they arrived when viewed most obliquely, was to
that thickness which exhibited them by perpendicular Rays, something
less than as 8 to 5. By the best of my Observations it was between 15
and 15-1/2 to 10; an increase about 24 times less than in the other
case.
Sometimes the Bubble would become of an uniform thickness all over,
except at the top of it near the black Spot, as I knew, because it would
exhibit the same appearance of Colours in all Positions of the Eye. And
then the Colours which were seen at its apparent circumference by the
obliquest Rays, would be different from those that were seen in other
places, by Rays less oblique to it. And divers Spectators might see the
same part of it of differing Colours, by viewing it at very differing
Obliquities. Now observing how much the Colours at the same places of
the Bubble, or at divers places of equal thickness, were varied by the
several Obliquities of the Rays; by the assistance of the 4th, 14th,
16th and 18th Observations, as they are hereafter explain'd, I collect
the thickness of the Water requisite to exhibit any one and the same
Colour, at several Obliquities, to be very nearly in the Proportion
expressed in this Table.
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