History of Scientific Ideas Volume 1 - Softcover
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1858 edition. Excerpt: ... refraction, &c.,) Descartes explained, by considering the particles of light as small globules, which change their direction when they impinge upon other bodies, according to the laws of Mechanics. Newton, with a much more profound knowledge of Mechanics than Descartes possessed, adopted, in the most mature of his speculations, nearly the same view of the nature of light; and endeavoured to show that reflection, refraction, and other properties of light, might be explained as the effects which certain forces, emanating from the particles of bodies, produce upon the luminiferous globules. But though some of the properties of light could thus be accounted for by the assumption of particles emitted from luminous bodies, and reflected or refracted by forces, other properties came into view which would not admit of the same explanation. The phenomena of diffraction (the fringes which accompany shadows) could never be truly represented by such an hypothesis, in spite of many attempts which were made. And the colours of thin plates, which show the rays of light to be affected by an alternation of two different conditions at small intervals along their length, led Newton himself to incline, often and strongly, to some hypothesis of undulation. The double refraction of Iceland spar, a phenomenon in itself very complex, could, it was found by Huyghens, be expressed with great simplicity by a certain hypothesis of undulations. Two hypotheses of the nature of the luminiferous medium were thus brought under consideration; the one representing Light as Matter emitted from the luminous object, the other, as Undulations propagated through a fluid. These two hypotheses remained in presence of each other during the whole of the last century, neither of...
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- PublisherTheClassics.us
- Publication date2013
- ISBN 10 1230314075
- ISBN 13 9781230314075
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages118
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