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
that they are so may be seen by illuminating white Paper by Light
reflected from black Substances. For the Paper will usually appear of a
bluish white; and the reason is, that black borders in the obscure blue
of the order described in the 18th Observation, and therefore reflects
more Rays of that Colour than of any other.
In these Descriptions I have been the more particular, because it is not
impossible but that Microscopes may at length be improved to the
discovery of the Particles of Bodies on which their Colours depend, if
they are not already in some measure arrived to that degree of
perfection. For if those Instruments are or can be so far improved as
with sufficient distinctness to represent Objects five or six hundred
times bigger than at a Foot distance they appear to our naked Eyes, I
should hope that we might be able to discover some of the greatest of
those Corpuscles. And by one that would magnify three or four thousand
times perhaps they might all be discover'd, but those which produce
blackness. In the mean while I see nothing material in this Discourse
that may rationally be doubted of, excepting this Position: That
transparent Corpuscles of the same thickness and density with a Plate,
do exhibit the same Colour. And this I would have understood not without
some Latitude, as well because those Corpuscles may be of irregular
Figures, and many Rays must be obliquely incident on them, and so have
a shorter way through them than the length of their Diameters, as
because the straitness of the Medium put in on all sides within such
Corpuscles may a little alter its Motions or other qualities on which
the Reflexion depends. But yet I cannot much suspect the last, because I
have observed of some small Plates of Muscovy Glass which were of an
even thickness, that through a Microscope they have appeared of the same
Colour at their edges and corners where the included Medium was
terminated, which they appeared of in other places. However it will add
much to our Satisfaction, if those Corpuscles can be discover'd with
Microscopes; which if we shall at length attain to, I fear it will be
the utmost improvement of this Sense. For it seems impossible to see the
more secret and noble Works of Nature within the Corpuscles by reason of
their transparency.
PROP. VIII.
_The Cause of Reflexion is not the impinging of Light on the solid or
impervious parts of Bodies, as is commonly believed._
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