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
Let ABC _abc_ [in _Fig._ 16.] represent a Prism, by which the Sun's
Light let into a dark Chamber through the Hole F, may be refracted
towards the Lens MN, and paint upon it at _p_, _q_, _r_, _s_, and _t_,
the usual Colours violet, blue, green, yellow, and red, and let the
diverging Rays by the Refraction of this Lens converge again towards X,
and there, by the mixture of all those their Colours, compound a white
according to what was shewn above. Then let another Prism DEG _deg_,
parallel to the former, be placed at X, to refract that white Light
upwards towards Y. Let the refracting Angles of the Prisms, and their
distances from the Lens be equal, so that the Rays which converged from
the Lens towards X, and without Refraction, would there have crossed and
diverged again, may by the Refraction of the second Prism be reduced
into Parallelism and diverge no more. For then those Rays will recompose
a beam of white Light XY. If the refracting Angle of either Prism be the
bigger, that Prism must be so much the nearer to the Lens. You will know
when the Prisms and the Lens are well set together, by observing if the
beam of Light XY, which comes out of the second Prism be perfectly white
to the very edges of the Light, and at all distances from the Prism
continue perfectly and totally white like a beam of the Sun's Light. For
till this happens, the Position of the Prisms and Lens to one another
must be corrected; and then if by the help of a long beam of Wood, as is
represented in the Figure, or by a Tube, or some other such Instrument,
made for that Purpose, they be made fast in that Situation, you may try
all the same Experiments in this compounded beam of Light XY, which have
been made in the Sun's direct Light. For this compounded beam of Light
has the same appearance, and is endow'd with all the same Properties
with a direct beam of the Sun's Light, so far as my Observation reaches.
And in trying Experiments in this beam you may by stopping any of the
Colours, _p_, _q_, _r_, _s_, and _t_, at the Lens, see how the Colours
produced in the Experiments are no other than those which the Rays had
at the Lens before they entered the Composition of this Beam: And by
consequence, that they arise not from any new Modifications of the Light
by Refractions and Reflexions, but from the various Separations and
Mixtures of the Rays originally endow'd with their colour-making
Qualities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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