United States or North Korea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


But I saw that if the plane NN was almost perpendicular to the plane GG, making the angle NCG, which is on the side A, an angle of 90 degrees 40 minutes, the hemi-spheroids NGN would become similar to the hemi-spheroids GNG, since the planes NN and GG were equally inclined by an angle of 45 degrees 20 minutes to the axis SS. In consequence it must needs be, if our theory is true, that the surfaces which the section through NN produces should effect the same refractions as the surfaces of the section through GG. And not only the surfaces of the section NN but all other sections produced by planes which might be inclined to the axis at an angle equal to 45 degrees 20 minutes.

Now as in the natural section of the crystal, made by a plane parallel to two opposite faces, which plane is here represented by the line GG, the refraction of the surfaces which are produced by it will be governed by the hemi-spheroids GNG, according to what has been explained in the preceding Theory.

Similarly, cutting the Crystal through NN, by a plane perpendicular to the parallelogram ABKF, the refraction of the surfaces will be governed by the hemi-spheroids NGN. And if one cuts it through PP, perpendicularly to the said parallelogram, the refraction of the surfaces ought to be governed by the hemi-spheroids PSP, and so for others.

These hemi-spheroids will necessarily all touch the plane of the parallelogram KIik at the same instant that Oo has reached Kk.

And, since a ray perpendicular to a plane, and coming from a very distant source of light, is nothing else, according to the precedent Theory, than the incidence of a portion of the wave parallel to that plane, I supposed the straight line RC, parallel and equal to AB, to be a portion of a wave of light, in which an infinitude of points such as RHhC come to meet the surface AB at the points AKkB. Then instead of the hemispherical partial waves which in a body of ordinary refraction would spread from each of these last points, as we have above explained in treating of refraction, these must here be hemi-spheroids.

In the time then that the line Oo arrives at the surface of the crystal at Kk, all the points of the wave COoc will have arrived at the rectangle Kc along lines parallel to OK; and from the points of their incidences there will originate, beyond that, in the crystal partial hemi-spheroids, similar to the hemi-spheroid QMq, and similarly disposed.