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5. On Cauchy's and Green's Doctrine of Extraneous Force to explain dynamically Fresnel's Kinematics of Double Refraction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2014

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Extract

Green's dynamics of polarisation by reflection, and Stokes's dynamics of the diffraction of polarised light, and Stokes's and Rayleigh's dynamics of the blue sky, all agree in, as seems to me, irrefragably demonstrating Fresnel's original conclusion, that in plane polarised light the line of vibration is perpendicular to the plane of polarisation; the “plane of polarisation” being defined as the plane through the ray and perpendicular to the reflecting surface, when light is polarised by reflection.

Type
Proceedings 1887-88
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1889

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References

page 22 note * Thomson and Tait's Natural Philosophy, § 171; (or Elements, § 150).

page 22 note † The elementary dynamics of elastic solids show that on this supposition there might be maximum and minimum velocities of propagation for rays in directions at 45° to one another, but that the velocities must essentially be equal for every two directions at 90° to one another in the principal plane, when the line of vibration is in this plane.

page 22 note ‡ British Association Report, 1862.

page 23 note * See Stokes, “On the Friction of Fluids in Motion and on the Equilibrium and Motion of Elastic Solids,” Camb. Phil. Trans., 1845 ; §§ 19, 20, reprinted in Stokes's Mathematical and Physical Papers, vol. i. p. 123; or Thomson and Tait's Natural Philosophy, §§ 684, 685 ; or Elements, §§ 655, 656.Google Scholar

page 23 note † So little has been done towards interpreting the formulas of either writer that it has not been hitherto noticed that positive values of Cauchy's G, H, I, or of Green's A, B, C, signify pulls, and negative values signify pressures.

page 24 note * See chap. iv. of “Mathematical System of Elasticity” (Thomson, W.), Trans. R. S. Lond., 1856, reprinted in vol. iii. of Mathematical and Physical Papers, now on the point of being published; or Thomson and Tait's Natural Philosophy, §§ 160, 164 ; or Elements, §§141, 158.Google Scholar

page 27 note * Thomson and Tait's Natural Philosophy, § 175 ; or Elements, § 154.