
the preceding portion to be the smaller, the newly combined undulation will be less advanced than if both had been equal, and the difference of its place will depend, not only on the difference of the length of the two routes, which will be constant for all the undulations, but also on the law and magnitude of those undulations, <s>the larger advancing <\s> so that the larger undulations will be some- what further advanced after each reunion than the smaller ones; and the same operation recurring at every particle of the medium, the whole progress of the larger undulations will be more rapid than that of the smaller; and hence the deviation, in consequence of the retardation of the motion of light in a denser medium, will of course be greater for the smaller than for the larger undulations. Assuming the law of the harmonic curve for the motions of the particles, we might without much difficulty reduce this conjecture to a comparison with experiment, but it would be necessary, in order to warrant our conclusions, to be provided with very accurate measures of the refractive and dispersive powers of various substances, for rays of all descriptions. Dr. Wollaston’s very interesting observations would furnish great assistance in this inquiry, when compared with the separation of colours by thin plates. I have repeated his experiment on the spectrum with perfect success, and I have made some attempts to procure comparative measures from thin plates; and I have found, that, as Sir Isaac Newton has already observed, the blue<s>s<\s> and violet<s>s<\s> light is more dispersed by refraction than in proportion to the difference of
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Manuscript details
- Author
- Thomas Young
- Reference
- L&P/12/32
- Series
- L&P
- Date
- 1800
- IIIF
-
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Cite as
An Account of Some Cases of the Production ofColours, Not Hitherto Described. Thomas Young., 1800. From The Royal Society, L&P/12/32
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