. Biographies of distinguished scientific men. Scientists. REFRACTIVE POWER. 143 identity of the refractive powers of wax, when transparent and when opaque, which seemed to be a necessary resuU, appeared both to the author, to Laplace, and to all the The law of refraction may also be more briefly deduced thus: tak- ing the fronts of the incident and refracted rays perpendicular to their. directions, their inclinations will be determined by the relative veloci- ties with which those fronts advance; and while the incident front has advanced through a space J, that of the refracted will have adva
. Biographies of distinguished scientific men. Scientists. REFRACTIVE POWER. 143 identity of the refractive powers of wax, when transparent and when opaque, which seemed to be a necessary resuU, appeared both to the author, to Laplace, and to all the The law of refraction may also be more briefly deduced thus: tak- ing the fronts of the incident and refracted rays perpendicular to their. directions, their inclinations will be determined by the relative veloci- ties with which those fronts advance; and while the incident front has advanced through a space J, that of the refracted will have advanced through dj^ proportional to their velocities; or, d V \ = V, =!"- But geometrically for any breadth, d = b sin. i d^=: b sin. r, Hence, which is the law of refraction. This method, though in a less concise form, is given by Mr. Power ( On Absorption of Rays, <fc., Philos. Trans. 1854, part i.,) who never- theless calls in question the principle of the assumption that the front of the rays is strictly perpendicular to their direction, and proposes a more general view: from which, without any assumption as to the nature or law of refraction, he shows that the formula of the sines is directly deducible from his analysis. Objections, however, have been raised against his reasoning.— Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Arago, F. (François), 1786-1853; Smyth, W. H. (William Henry), 1788-1865; Powell, Baden, 1796-1860; Grant, Robert, 1814-1892; Fairbairn, William, Sir, 1789-1874. Boston, Ticknor and Fields
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