The Newton Missing Experiment (original) (raw)
Revista Mexicana De Fisica E, 2006
Some characteristics of Newton's philosophical method relevant to his works First Paper on Light and Colours (1672) y Opticks (1704) are discussed. It is shown from his prism experiments using different materials described in those works that it is possible that he may have carried out experiments with air prisms in water. This would have questioned the inductive conclusion that red rays are always less refracted than blue ones. Finally, and with a pedagogical intention, an experiment is reported to illustrate the result obtained depending on the material of the prism and of the medium.
Experiment and mathematics in Newton's theory of color
Physics Today, 1984
On 18 January 1672 Isaac Newton wrote Henry Oldenburg, Secretary of the Royal Society, that he would send him a paper that he modestly described as “being in my Judgment the oddest if not the most considerable detection wch hath hitherto beene made in the operations of Nature.” Newton was not referring to his theory of gravitation—that was still more than a dozen years away—but rather to his new theory of the nature of white light and color. He had discovered that rays of different color have different degrees of refrangibility—or, as we would put it, that the index of refraction varies with wavelength—and that white light and, in particular, sunlight consist of a mixture of innumerable colors. Less than three weeks later, as Newton promised, he sent to the Royal Society his famous paper, “A New theory about light and colors,” which was published at once in the Philosophical Transactions. In the “New theory” he boldly proclaims: “A naturalist would scearce expect to see ye science o...
The optical papers of Isaac Newton
1984
List of plates Preface Editorial note Abbreviated references Introduction Synopsis of the Lectiones opticae and Optica and their major differences Concordance of article numbers Lectiones opitcae: Optica: Part I. The Refractions of Light Rays: 1. The refrangibility of rays differs 2. The measure of refractions 3. The refractions of planes 4. The refractions of curved surfaces Part II. The Origin of Colors: 5. The doctrine of colors is set forth and proved by prismatic experiments 6. Various phenomena of colors Bibliography Index.
Newton trough the Prism of Goethe
Foreword by the foreword author The ideas of colour and wavelength are so commonplace in the modern world that there are normally no second thoughts about the observational foundations of those ideas. Taking the path of Goethe’s studies on colour, Emir Korkut not only provides a clear historical overview that will help the reader obtain the context of the concept clearly but also points out what is actually observed as distinguished from what is thought out and added to what is observed. This phenomenological approach is a hard task at the best of times, as we bring in so many ideas which appear “obvious” to us at first glance that we do not question it further, but Korkut succeeds in teasing apart the assumptions from the observations for a variety of phenomena in optics. Perhaps the most critical contribution to the discussion is how Korkut never loses sight, in every sense of the word, of the whole image, whether he is discussing light, darkness, refraction, reflection, polarization, diffraction, or any of the other repetitive patterns seen in optics. The ability to retain the whole image in the mind and to break away from the one-sidedness of the ray-tracing habits we have all learnt is made manifest in this work. It is the changing of these habits of observation and habits of thoughts that the book highlights and that shows the coherence to be gained as a result of retaining the focus on the whole image all the way through in optical observations. All in all, Korkut’s work is a brilliant contribution to fundamental optics research that demands an adequate re-thinking of the fundamentals, as such a work should.. Gopi Krishna Vijaya, PhD, Utah Spring 2023.
Robert Smith’s A Compleat System of Opticks (1738) was the most prominent eighteenth-century text-book account of Newton’s optics. By rearranging the findings and conclusions of Opticks, it made them accessible to a wider public and at the same time refashioned Newton’s optics into a renewed science of optics. In this process, the optical parts of Principia were integrated, thus blending the experimental inferences and mechanistic hypotheses that Newton had carefully separated. The Compleat System was not isolated in its refashioning of Newton’s optics. Dutch and English promoters of the new philosophy had preceded Smith by giving Opticks a text-book treatment, and they too integrated experimental and mechanistic inferences. In this way eighteenth-century text-books produced a natural philosophical discourse of light, colors and matter. This paper traces the refashioning of Newton’s optics in Dutch and English text-books of natural philosophy during the first half of the eighteenth century. It concludes with the Dutch translation of A Compleat System of Opticks and its reception among innovators of telescope manufacture.
Salvaging Newton's 313 Year Old Corpuscular Theory of Light
viXra, 2017
As is well known – Newton's corpuscular model of light can explain the Law of Reflection and Snell's Law of Refraction. Sadly and regrettably – its predictions about the speed of light in different mediums runs contrary to experience. Because of this, Newton's theory of light was abandoned in favour of the wave theory. It [Newton's corpuscular model of light] predicts that the speed of light is larger in higher density mediums. This prediction was shown to be wrong by Foucault's 1850 landmark-ing experiment that brought down Newton's theory. The major assumption of Newton's corpuscular model of light is that the corpuscles of light have an attraction with the particle of the medium. When the converse is assumed, i.e., the corpuscles of light are assumed to not have an attraction-effect, but a repulsion-effect with the particles of the medium, one obtains the correct predictions of the speed of light in denser mediums. This assumption of Newton's corpu...
Light Science, 2019
In general, when light encounters the boundary between two media, a part of the light is reflected and part is transmitted into the second medium. The ray that enters the second medium usually experiences a change in direction. This bending of light is called refraction. In this chapter we will introduce a law that governs the path of the refracted light in the second medium. An understanding of how light behaves when passing from one medium to another is of importance for it is central to the operation of optical devices such as eyeglasses, cameras, microscopes, and telescopes, and is the basis for understanding the functioning of the human eye and the formation of rainbows and mirages. The most obvious result of the phenomenon of refraction is the bending of light when it passes from one medium to another (Fig. .1a). When a light ray goes from air to glass, for example, it is slowed down and bent toward the normal. When it leaves the glass, it is bent away from the normal. If the two boundaries of the glass are parallel (as in a thick pane of window glass), the angle of deviation (bending) in both cases is the same, so the ray emerges traveling parallel to its original path, as shown in Fig. .1a, b. This is a good thing, of course, or else the world would appear to be pretty distorted when viewed through a window! Note that if the ray had traveled the shortest distance between A and D, it would have taken the straight-line path AD, shown as a dashed line. However, to get from A to D in the shortest time, it is advantageous to follow path ABCD, which reduces the time spent in the slow medium. (This is like driving a few miles out of your way in order to travel part of the distance on an expressway, which may reduce your total travel time.) The principle of least time, in fact, predicts that light will always choose the path of least time. This powerful principle, formulated by French physicist Pierre de Fermat in 1657, can also be used to arrive at the law of reflection h i = h r (see Chap. 3).