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
the violet, as they were really found to be in the fifth Observation.
And therefore the first Ring of all Colours encompassing the white Spot
of Light shall be red without any violet within, and yellow, and green,
and blue in the middle, as it was found in the second Observation; and
these Colours in the second Ring, and those that follow, shall be more
expanded, till they spread into one another, and blend one another by
interfering.
These seem to be the reasons of these Rings in general; and this put me
upon observing the thickness of the Glass, and considering whether the
dimensions and proportions of the Rings may be truly derived from it by
computation.
_Obs._ 8. I measured therefore the thickness of this concavo-convex
Plate of Glass, and found it every where 1/4 of an Inch precisely. Now,
by the sixth Observation of the first Part of this Book, a thin Plate of
Air transmits the brightest Light of the first Ring, that is, the bright
yellow, when its thickness is the 1/89000th part of an Inch; and by the
tenth Observation of the same Part, a thin Plate of Glass transmits the
same Light of the same Ring, when its thickness is less in proportion of
the Sine of Refraction to the Sine of Incidence, that is, when its
thickness is the 11/1513000th or 1/137545th part of an Inch, supposing
the Sines are as 11 to 17. And if this thickness be doubled, it
transmits the same bright Light of the second Ring; if tripled, it
transmits that of the third, and so on; the bright yellow Light in all
these cases being in its Fits of Transmission. And therefore if its
thickness be multiplied 34386 times, so as to become 1/4 of an Inch, it
transmits the same bright Light of the 34386th Ring. Suppose this be the
bright yellow Light transmitted perpendicularly from the reflecting
convex side of the Glass through the concave side to the white Spot in
the center of the Rings of Colours on the Chart: And by a Rule in the
7th and 19th Observations in the first Part of this Book, and by the
15th and 20th Propositions of the third Part of this Book, if the Rays
be made oblique to the Glass, the thickness of the Glass requisite to
transmit the same bright Light of the same Ring in any obliquity, is to
this thickness of 1/4 of an Inch, as the Secant of a certain Angle to
the Radius, the Sine of which Angle is the first of an hundred and six
arithmetical Means between the Sines of Incidence and Refraction,
counted from the Sine of Incidence when the Refraction is made out of
any plated Body into any Medium encompassing it; that is, in this case,
out of Glass into Air. Now if the thickness of the Glass be increased by
degrees, so as to bear to its first thickness, (_viz._ that of a quarter
of an Inch,) the Proportions which 34386 (the number of Fits of the
perpendicular Rays in going through the Glass towards the white Spot in
the center of the Rings,) hath to 34385, 34384, 34383, and 34382, (the
numbers of the Fits of the oblique Rays in going through the Glass
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