"Refraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the systems, which have nothing psychic in themselves and which never become accessible to our psychic perception, corresponding to the lenses of the telescope which design the image. If we continue this comparison, we may say that the censor between two systems corresponds to the refraction of rays during their passage ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... illusion regarding distances was difficult to overcome, and could only be realized by observing how very slowly we neared the mountains we were approaching. The atmosphere was of remarkable purity, and its powers of refraction reminded me of past experience in the Rocky Mountains. We had sunset and moon-rise at once. 'Adam had no more in Eden save the head of ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... produced. The apparatus was arranged so as to cause a series of eight lenses one foot in diameter and three feet focal distance to revolve with any velocity up to sixty revolutions per minute round a central lamp. The light from this lamp being concentrated by refraction through the eight lenses into eight pencils, having a divergence of about eight degrees each, illuminated when at rest not quite fifty degrees of the horizon; but when this system of lenses was ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... lost in this very storm. Next day came another of the sea wonders. The cry of land started them all from the dinner table; but the land happened to be an immense field of ice, which, with the inequalities of its surface and the effect of refraction, presented some appearance of a wooded country. On that night the cry of "Light a-head," while they were still several hundred miles from land, excited new astonishment. "All the knowing ones" clearly distinguished a magnificent revolver. The paddles were accordingly stopped ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... aperture and 52 feet focus, and it would have been impossible to have bestowed the necessary attention upon it had we made a business of observing. That instrument is nearly finished, and I hope it will effect something for astronomy. The unequal refraction of the atmosphere will limit its powers, but how far remains to be ascertained.... Lady Rosse joins me in very kind remembrances ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... les causes naturelles de tous les changements qui arrivent a la matiere; ce que je confirme par i'explication des effets les plus generaux de la Physique, tels que sont la durete des corps, leur fluidite, leur pesanteur, legerete, la lumiere et la refraction et reflexion de ses rayons."—Malebranche, "Recherche de ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... Cooke, long a resident in Holland, and a keen and observing artist, remarked that the skies in the pictures of Backhuysen, though dark and inky, were precisely what we see now—the deep Zuyder Sea swallowing up any refraction of light which would otherwise have illuminated the clouds; while the skies of Cuyp, receiving the coruscations arising from the meeting of the two rivers, the Meuse and the Waal, the scenes of most of his pictures, exhibit that luminous reflection and unsteady appearance peculiar to his ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... open wings, The beauteous image, in fruition sweet Gladdening the thronged spirits. Each did seem A little ruby, whereon so intense The sun-beam glow'd that to mine eyes it came In clear refraction. And that, which next Befalls me to portray, voice hath not utter'd, Nor hath ink written, nor in fantasy Was e'er conceiv'd. For I beheld and heard The beak discourse; and, what intention form'd Of many, singly as of one express, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Lever what you thought of him, dearest friend, and then he said, all in a glow and animation, that you were not only his own delight but the delight of his children, which is affection by refraction, isn't it? Quite gratified he seemed by the hold of your good opinion. Not only is he the notability par excellence of these Baths of Lucca, where he has lived a whole year, during the snows upon the mountains, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... never stirred a finger, and seemed as incapable of being successfully wound up, as the pecuniary affairs of their former owners, there was always great choice in Mr Brogley's shop; and various looking-glasses, accidentally placed at compound interest of reflection and refraction, presented to the eye an eternal ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... frightened at the complexity; but, on the other hand, do not hope to render it hastily. Look at it well, making out everything that you see, and distinguishing each component part of the effect. There will be, first, the stones seen through the water, distorted always by refraction, so that if the general structure of the stone shows straight parallel lines above the water, you may be sure they will be bent where they enter it; then the reflection of the part of the stone above the water crosses and interferes with the part that is seen ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... his quick little steps up and down the dingy room. "Look here, laddie! There's a great continent from the equator to the icebergs, and not a man in it who could correct an astigmatism. What do they know of modern eye-surgery and refraction? Why, dammy, they don't know much about it in the provinces of England yet, let alone Brazil. Man, if you could only see it, there's a fringe of squinting millionaires sitting ten deep round the whole continent with their money in their hands waiting for an oculist. ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... was of a single piece, had not been properly shaped. Mathematicians had abundantly demonstrated that a single lens, if properly figured, must conduct all rays of light to the same focus, provided all rays experienced equal refraction in passing through the glass. Until Newton's discovery of the composition of white light, it had been taken for granted that the several rays in a white beam were equally refrangible. No doubt if this had been the case, a perfect telescope could have been produced by ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... our design to enter into an elaborate description of this piece of mechanism, as every student of philosophy, who is well acquainted with the reflection and refraction of rays of light, will understand how an ingenious contrivance produced the results spoken of. The same principle enters into the arrangement of the camera obscura. There was an aperture very artfully cut through the wall, and so guarded on the outside as to escape notice; ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... improvements opened the way for the reform of physical science and for its immense modern advance. In his optical investigations he established the law of refraction of light. His ingenious theory of the vortices—tracing gravity, magnetism, light, and heat, to the whirling or revolving movements of the molecules of matter with which the universe is filled—was accepted as science for about a ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... a corner of the universe seen through a temperament, the temperament of Mr. Vedder must offer an enthralling study, for it seems to be a lens whose power of refraction defies prophecy because it deals with the incalculable forces. His art concerns itself little with the aesthetic, but is chiefly the art of the intellect and the imagination. All manner of symbols and analogies; the laws of the universe that prevail beyond the stars; the ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... cried, and his cheeks flushed with annoyance. "Think of my wasting three cartridges in that fashion! If I had him at Bisley I'd shoot the turban off him, but this vibrating glare means refraction. What's the matter with ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the basis of alcoholic homes driving the children out into the streets. This was found to be markedly the case, the children of alcoholic parents spending much more of their spare time in the streets. An examination, however, of the vision and refraction of children with regard to the time they spent in-and out-of-doors, showed no clear and definite result, the children who spent the whole or most of their spare time in the streets having the most ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... she now abandoned herself utterly, plunging gaily into the deepest waters of the basin. From side to side of its narrow depths she sped rapidly, the blue-white of the spring water showing her lithe limbs in perfect grace of motion made mystically indefinite and shimmering by refraction through the little rippling waves her progress raised. She raced and strained, from the pure love of effort, as if a stake of ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... muscles—most probably in their cortical centres. It would appear that in some cases the spasmodic jerkings are originated by certain movements habitually made by the patient in the course of his work. In others, as a result of astigmatism and other errors of refraction, the patient has acquired the habit of repeatedly tilting his head to enable him to see clearly, and these movements ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... circumstances, and the disagreeable sensation produced by it returned. I determined to go home and place myself in the same position—as regards the mirror—and if the same effect was produced, I would make up my mind that it was the natural result of some principle of refraction or optics, which I did not understand, and dismiss it. I tried the experiment with the same result; and as I had said to myself, accounted for it on some principle unknown to me, and it then ceased to trouble me. But ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... lakes of water in the distance, and hastened on to them; and then they fancied they were close to rivers and islands, covered with luxuriant foliage, but still were doomed to disappointment; as all was the result of the highly-rarefied air, and the refraction of the sun's rays on the sultry plain. What would they have given for a bush even to afford them any shelter from the noonday sun, for the crowns of their heads appeared as if covered with live coal, and their minds began to wander. The poor horses moved at the slowest pace, and only when ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... short; since the 31st of January the sun had reappeared in refraction, and was every day rising higher and higher above the horizon. But it was hid by the snow, which, if it did not produce utter ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... lens that there is no single and exact focus where all meet, and that the image of a star, for instance, formed by an ordinary lens, even if the spherical aberration has been corrected, appears blurred and discolored. There is no such difficulty with a mirror, because there is in that case no refraction of the light, and consequently no splitting up of the elements ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... through the body; but if it, in passing from one medium to another of different density, fall obliquely, it is bent from its direct course and recedes from it, either towards the right or left, and this bending is called refraction; (see Fig. 3, b.) If a ray of light passes from a rarer into a denser medium it is refracted towards a perpendicular in that medium; but if it passes from a denser into rarer it is bent further from a perpendicular in that medium. Owing to this bending of the rays ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... which alone are visible at high water. On one occasion, when in a boat, we were so entangled by these shallows that we could hardly find our way. Nothing was visible but the flat beds of mud; the day was not very clear, and there was much refraction, or, as the sailors expressed it, "things loomed high." The only object within our view which was not level was the horizon; rushes looked like bushes unsupported in the air, and water like ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Chtellerault, but he gave up the idea, and settled in Paris (June 1625), in the quarter where he had sought seclusion before. By this time he had ceased to devote himself to pure mathematics, and in company with his friends Mersenne and Mydorge was deeply interested in the theory of the refraction of light, and in the practical work of grinding glasses of the best shape suitable for optical instruments. But all the while he was engaged with reflections on the nature of man, of the soul and of God, and for a while he remained invisible even to his most familiar friends. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... time for aim, but seeing a vague shadow below the boat, he allowed for the refraction of the water, and threw the small barbed spear with all his might. His cast was as clean as though he were experienced, and as he grasped the rope he cried to the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... of the dinghy. The schooner lay still in a pool of colourful water, the coral and weeds on the bottom in plain view, some of the swaying plants magnified by refraction. There was no air stirring, and from the far end of the island a morning haze was rising like smoke from flats which ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... Paul seems to me the most plainly, the most determinedly practical in his writing. What has been called his mysticism is at one time the exercise of a power of seeing, as by spiritual refraction, truths that had not, perhaps have not yet, risen above the human horizon; at another, the result of a wide-eyed habit of noting the analogies and correspondences between the concentric regions of creation; it is the working of a poetic imagination divinely alive, whose part is to foresee ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... naked eye, is pellucid in a microscope; and a hair seen in this way, loses its former colour, and is, in a great measure, pellucid, with a mixture of some bright sparkling colours, such as appear from the refraction of diamonds, and other pellucid bodies. Blood, to the naked eye, appears all red; but by a good microscope, wherein its lesser parts appear, shows only some few globules of red, swimming in a pellucid liquor, and how these red globules ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... legs and beaks, came dipping over the water, solemnly wondering at the intruders. The morning mists rolling along before the resistless monarch of day confused the visible world for a time, so that between refraction and reflection and buoyant spirits Victor Ravenshaw felt that at last he had found the realms of fairyland, and a feeling of certainty that he should soon rescue his ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mitscherlich, communicated to the Academy of Sciences, set him on fire with curiosity. Mitscherlich declared: "The paratartrate and the tartrate of soda and ammonia have the same chemical composition, the same crystalline form, the same angles, the same specific weight, the same double refraction, and the same inclination of the optic axes. Dissolved in water, their refraction is the same. But while the dissolved tartrate causes the plane of polarized light to rotate, the paratartrate exacts ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... just the most definitely outlined action, the most individual purpose, the most sharply expressive thought, the most intense and personal passion, are the points or saliency in life which most surely catch the radiance of eternity they break. The white light was "blank" until shattered by refraction; and Browning is less Browning when he glories in its unbroken purity than when he rejoices in ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... instruments, his success was much less than that method was capable of affording. The bringing it into general use was reserved for Dr Maskelyne, our Astronomer Royal. See the preface to the Tables for correcting the Effects of Refraction and Parallax, published by the Board of Longitude, under the direction of Dr Shepherd, Flumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... refraction of his mind by which a concentrated and individualised Britling did but present a larger impersonal Britling beneath, carried with it a duplication of his conscience and sense of responsibility. To his ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... state of mind which might be called the refraction of an idea by the presence of another idea. An example is the habit of saying, "Unprepared, as I have—'' before beginning a speech. The speaker means to say that he has not prepared himself, but, as he really has prepared ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... Experiment Early Scientific Notions Sciences of Observation Knowledge of the Ancients regarding Light Defects of the Eye Our Instruments Rectilineal Propagation of Light Law of Incidence and Reflection Sterility of the Middle Ages Refraction Discovery of Snell Partial and Total Reflection Velocity of Light Roemer, Bradley, Foucault, and Fizeau Principle of Least Action Descartes and the Rainbow Newton's Experiments on the Composition of Solar Light His Mistake regarding Achromatism Synthesis ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... more or less than disassociated states of mind and need not in reality be any more serious than errors of refraction of vision, faulty locomotion or lack of coordination. It comes because individuals know nothing of the psychology of themselves or their own minds and is the result of over-intensified mental and physical activity and loss of poise, ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... his throat. "We'll cover it quickly so that we can get to the immediate practical aspects. Are you interested in biodynamics ... umah ... no, of course not. Let me see. Are you at all familiar with the laws pertaining to refraction of ... umah, no." He cleared his throat again, unhappily. "Have you ever seen a medusa, Mr. Crowley? The gelatinous umbrella-shaped free swimming form of marine invertebrate related to the coral polyp and the ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... to protect him from the cold winds while he kept watch over the sea and the icebergs in view, and from which he signalled danger and sometimes gave orders to the crew. The nights were short; the sun had reappeared since the 31st of January in consequence of the refraction, and seemed to get higher and higher above the horizon. But the snow impeded the view, and if it did not cause complete obscurity ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... have known it from the first," he muttered. "Reciprocal refraction was the one thing ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... girl was standing at the side of a mirror where the laws of incidence and refraction would unfortunately not permit her to ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... off; and eastward those of Cachar, which are loftier, are about seventy miles. To the south the view is limited by the Tipperah hills, which, where nearest, are 100 miles distant; while to the south-west lies the sea-like Gangetic delta, whose horizon, lifted by refraction, must be fully 120. The extent of this view is therefore upwards of 340 miles in one direction, and the visible horizon of the observer encircles an area of fully thirty thousand square miles, which is greater than ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... because thereby the theory is excluded, or at least made extremely improbable, that the phenomenon of refraction is to be ascribed to, a ring of vapor surrounding the sun for a great distance. Indeed, such a refraction should cause a deviation in the observed direction, and, in order to produce the displacement of one of the stars under observation itself a slight proximity of the vapor ring ...
— The Einstein Theory of Relativity • H.A. Lorentz
... gentle feelings, and gentler yet in her attendance on her patron's obsequies, in the discovery that all of which he died possessed he'd left to her, but it is the duller surfaces that are slowest to give refraction, the least used springs that are least pliant. She was come a long road from her first signs of hardening. She was past, now, the stage where, when grieving for the little old man, she would have felt contrition that her first thought at his ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... often, in Scotland rarely, is the blue sky. (Laughter) Lord Rayleigh's brilliant piece of mathematical work on the dynamics of blue sky is a monument to the application of mathematics to a subject of supreme difficulty, and on the subject of refraction of light he has pointed out the way towards finding all that has to be known, though he has ended his work by admitting that the explanation of the fundamentals of the reflection and refraction of light is still wanting and is a subject for the efforts of the British Association for the ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... He found that before he could make a good achromatic telescope it was necessary that he should calculate his curves from data depending upon the nature of the glass. He accordingly proceeded to study the optical laws of refraction, in which his knowledge of geometry and mathematics greatly helped him. And in course of time, by his rare and exquisite manipulative skill, he succeeded in constructing a four-inch refractor, or achromatic telescope, of ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... be made to the article REFRACTION for the general discussion of the phenomenon known as the refraction of light. It is there shown that every substance, transparent to light, has a definite refractive index, which is the ratio of the velocity of light in vacuo to its velocity in the medium to which the refractive ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... corrected and changed some parts, the copies which I had made of it at that time may serve for proof that I have yet added nothing to it save some conjectures touching the formation of Iceland Crystal, and a novel observation on the refraction of Rock Crystal. I have desired to relate these particulars to make known how long I have meditated the things which now I publish, and not for the purpose of detracting from the merit of those who, without having seen ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... the white light of the sun is composed of the seven colors of the spectrum in combination, which colors may be readily separated by the refraction of the prism. All objects possess, in a greater or less degree, the power of decomposing light and absorbing colors. Now a ray of sunlight falling upon any given object is in a measure decomposed, a portion of its integral colors is absorbed, and the remainder or complementary ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... now dusk, but the two regiments engaged in the flanking movement pushed on to gain the bluff. Just as they reached the crest of the ridge the moon rose from behind, enlarged by the refraction of the atmosphere, and as the attacking column passed along the summit it crossed the moon's disk and disclosed to us below a most interesting panorama, every figure nearly being thrown out in full relief. The enemy, now outflanked ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... said he had not as yet brought his experiments so far as the last speakers. He was not a Naturalist himself. His line was Optics. He described some interesting cases of Double Refraction, Mock Suns, and Lunar Rainbows, that had come under his notice, before sitting down with some suddenness on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... pure softness delighted them, its perfect regularity astonished them. What was it? they asked Barbican. In a few words he explained it. The beautiful luminous ring was simply an optical illusion, produced by the refraction of the terrestrial atmosphere. All the stars in the neighborhood of the Earth, and many actually behind it, had their rays refracted, diffused, radiated, and finally converged to a focus by the atmosphere, as if by a double ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... of the eyeball is essential to ocular refraction, and closely related to ocular nutrition. Fully to understand the mechanism for its regulation would carry us far toward an understanding of the causes of glaucoma. Normal tension is maintained with a continuous flow of fluid into the ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various
... of these false ponds I have never seen satisfactorily explained. They have usually been attributed to a refraction, by which a section of the bordering sky is thrown below the horizon; but I am convinced that they are the effect of reflection. It seems that a gas (emanating probably from the heated earth and its vegetable matter) floats upon the elevated flats, and is of sufficient ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... woke the next morning the sun was pouring in between her curtains of old brocade, and its refraction from the ripples of the Canal was drawing a network of golden scales across the vaulted ceiling. The maid had just placed a tray on a slim marquetry table near the bed, and over the edge of the tray Susy discovered the small serious face of Clarissa Vanderlyn. ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... vertical line in the sign of Taurus. The date was thus satisfactorily established, and a calculation of the longitude of the house was deduced with an accuracy which in those circumstances was certainly commendable. Nevertheless, as the facts and the theory of refraction were not thoroughly understood, nor Tycho Brahe's tables of refraction generally known, pilot Barendz could not be expected to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... swimming down, down, down under the ship's bilge, growing to a faint brownish yellow speck which wavered and shook with the refraction of the disturbed surface. Then while I looked the line slacked, and the brownish yellow object beneath wavered into a larger size. Evidently he was coming up and had failed to make the five fathoms ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... I used to find Paul Tichlorne plunged as deeply into the study of light polarization, diffraction, and interference, single and double refraction, and all manner ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... is the mirage, from the Latin miror, to wonder, which appears to be what you are doing just now. The steamer you see sailing along the shore is an optical illusion, a reflection, and not a reality. Refraction, which is the bending of the rays of light, produces this effect. If you look at a straight stick set up in the water, it will appear to be bent, and this is caused by refraction. The learned gentlemen present will excuse me for going back ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... prism. Look at Fig. 112. The red rays passing through the flint glass are but little deflected, while the violet rays turn suddenly outwards. This is just what is wanted, for it counteracts the unequal inward refraction by B, and both sets of rays come to a focus in the same plane. Such a lens is called achromatic, or colourless. If you hold a common reading-glass some distance away from large print you will see that ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... hitherto inculcating, at least, admits of no solution from it. In short it is this. Before the double convex glass or concave speculum EBF, let the point A be placed at such a distance that the rays proceeding from A, after refraction or reflection, be brought to unite somewhere in the AxAB. And suppose the point of union (i.e. the image of the point A, as hath been already set forth) to be Z; between which and B, the vertex of the glass or speculum, conceive the eye to be anywhere placed. The question now is, where the point ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... as they dived down through the waves of sleep in which Swann was submerged, did not reach his consciousness without undergoing that refraction which turns a ray of light, at the bottom of a bowl of water, into another sun; just as, a moment earlier, the sound of the door-bell, swelling in the depths of his abyss of sleep into the clangour of an alarum, had engendered the episode of the fire. Meanwhile ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... "Highland-looking." Over the hill from Kirkoswald a farm-road leads to the coast. As I came down above Turnberry, the sea view was indeed strangely different from the day before. The cold fogs were all blown away; and there was Ailsa Craig, like a refraction, magnified and deformed, of the Bass Rock; and there were the chiselled mountain tops of Arran, veined and tipped with snow; and behind, and fainter, the low, blue land of Cantyre. Cottony clouds stood, in a great castle, over the top of Arran, and blew out in long streamers to the south. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to his dissertation on sight, spectacles, focusses, lens, reflection, refraction, &c.; but, as he was not defective in the particular organs alluded to, felt but little interested on the subject; selected what he really wanted, or rather what etiquette required, when, to their great ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... woman, who, gazing intently on the glass, and searching it with their eyes, called for, and demanded, a solution of the question proposed. The devil then answered these inquiries by certain images, which, by a kind of refraction, shone from the water on the polished and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... in the very same way as a beam of light is polarised by the crystal Tourmaline. He then showed that a large number of substances, which are opaque to Light (e.g. pitch, coal-tar etc.) are transparent to Electric Waves. He next determined the Index of Refraction of various substances for invisible Electric Radiation and thereby eliminated a great difficulty which had presented itself in Maxwell's theory as to the relation between the index of refraction of light and the di-electric constant of insulators. ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... Pennsylvania; Professor of Optics and Refraction; formerly Physician in Philadelphia Hospital; Member of Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania State and ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... denial to sin and sorrow. The sun was just mounting over the horizon, looking up the clear cloud-mottled sky. From millions of water-drops hanging on the bending stalks of grass, sparkled his rays in varied refraction, transformed here to a gorgeous burning ruby, there to an emerald, green as the grass, and yonder to a flashing, sunny topaz. The chanting priest-lark had gone up from the low earth, as soon as the heavenly light had begun to enwrap and illumine the folds of its tabernacle; and ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... was impossible that the absolute objective truth of anything could be seen by any mortal, but only some partial approximation, and, as it were, sketch of it, according as the object was represented with more or less refraction on the mirror of his subjectivity. And therefore, as the true inquirer deals only with the possible, and lets the impossible go, it was the business of the wise man, shunning the search after absolute truth as an impious attempt of the Titans to scale Olympus, to busy ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... By the sun's refraction—that is, the variation of the rays of light from their direct course, occasioned by the difference of density in ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... first hand, though the functions of the parts are not given with complete accuracy. Many other points of physiological optics are touched on, in general erroneously. Bacon then discusses vision in a right line, the laws of reflection and refraction, and the construction of mirrors and lenses. In this part of the work, as in the preceding, his reasoning depends essentially upon his peculiar view of natural agents and their activities. His fundamental physical maxims are matter and force; the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... I surrendered myself to unreason; it is a not unpleasant process, occasionally. Supposing now that all we see and accept is but the merest fragment of the truth, or perhaps only a refraction thereof? Supposing that we do live again and again, and that our animating principle, whatever it might be, does inhabit various bodies, which, naturally enough, it would shape to its own taste and likeness? Would that taste and likeness vary so very much ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... observation by Galileo. It was thus with the application of the isochronism of the pendulum to the making of instruments for measuring intervals, astronomical and other. It was thus when the discovery that the refraction and dispersion of light did not follow the same law of variation, affected both astronomy and physiology by giving us achromatic telescopes and microscopes. It was thus when Bradley's discovery of ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... stranger had great eyes like burning flames, but a second look dispelled the illusion. The red sunlight was shining on the windows of St. Mary's Church behind our seat, and as the sun dipped there was just sufficient change in the refraction and reflection to make it appear as if the light moved. I called Lucy's attention to the peculiar effect, and she became herself with a start, but she looked sad all the same. It may have been that she was thinking of that terrible night up there. We ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... gas there is less resistance to lateral displacement than in a solid, and the less the resistance the less the velocity, so that this fact fits in with the idea of a gaseous core perfectly. If there is such n core, moreover, of less rigidity it would have less refraction. Consequently waves not striking the border above the angle of total reflection would be totally reflected, and just as around a bubble there is a dark border where the light does not get through so at a certain distance from the source of an earthquake there would be a circle (it ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... of taking the latitude there are numerous possibilities of inexactness. It does not appear that any correction was made for refraction of light, or the precession of the equinoxes. But the most important source of inaccuracy was in the use of the astrolabe whose disk was so small that its divisions could not be carried beyond degrees, and consequently minutes were arrived at by sheer estimation, and usually ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... prisms of different varieties of tabasheer, Brewster proceeded to determine its refractive index, arriving at the remarkable result that tabasheer "has a lower index of refraction than any other known solid or liquid, and that it actually holds an intermediate place between water and gaseous bodies!" This excessively low refractive power Brewster believes to afford a complete explanation of the extraordinary behavior exhibited by tabasheer ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... I share this confidence, that I commenced a calculation as to the time at which we might expect to reach land. Assuming it to have been thirty miles distant at the time when we had seen its spectrum, by means of the refraction, arising from a peculiar state of the atmosphere; and estimating the rate of the current at three miles an hour, I came to the conclusion that we could not even come in sight of it until late at night; and it was therefore without any strong feeling ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... strange but enticing lustre. Even in the unsearching moonlight, which is after all rather deceptive than illuminative, I could not but notice one rare quality of her eyes. Each had some quality of refraction which made it look as though it contained a star. At every movement she made, the stars exhibited new beauties, of more rare and radiant force. She looked at me imploringly as the heavy curtain rolled back, and in eloquent gestures implored me to admit her. Instinctively ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... sound-teaching than experiments made by the pupil, and this book, by considering the difficulty of costly apparatus, has rendered an important service to teacher and student alike. It deals with the sources of light, reflection, refraction, and decomposition of light. The experiments are extremely simple and well suited to ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... that it is not diaphanous convinces me that it is a dense vapor formed by the calorification of ascending moisture dephlogisticated by refraction. A few endiometrical experiments would confirm this, but it is not necessary. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... this eye is by no means as developed as the organ of vision, for instance, of the water salamander (the triton) or of the so-called axolotl, for it exists only in a kind of embryonic development, and contains neither a vitreous humor nor a lens for the refraction of the rays of light. As, however, the nerve of vision exists, it is possible that this salamander may be able to discern in some ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... something rather curious about these pools. Our guide saw us measuring the depth of one of them, which was full of greenish-blue water, colored only by the refraction of the light. He took our long alpenstock, and poising it, sent it down into the water, as a man might throw a javelin. It disappeared, but in a few seconds leaped up at us out of the water, as if thrown back again ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... charts were studied. The atmospheric conditions were such that it was very possible that due to refraction Venus would have been visible just on the horizon. The fact that the UFO faded so fast would bear this out because the conditions for such refraction are critical and a slight change in atmospheric conditions could easily have caused the planet ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... who subsequently made a thorough investigation of the matter, gave it as his opinion that this unprecedented quantity of vapor had gathered in the air in layers so as to cut off the rays of light, by repeated refraction, in a remarkable degree. He thought that the specific gravity of this vapor must have been the same as that of the air, which caused it to be held so long in suspension in the atmosphere. In this case the extent of the darkness would coincide with the area of the vapor, and it would continue ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... flashing as it turned over, while two merry little young scamps were diving down after it, racing to see which would get first to the coin. This soon disappeared in the disturbed water, while the figures of the boys grew more and more shadowy and distorted by the varying refraction. ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... Will, if stripped of unsuitable phraseology, are not very difficult questions. They are about as easy to comprehend as the air-pump, the law of refraction of light, or the atomic theory of chemistry. Distort them by inapposite metaphors, view them in perplexing attitudes, and you may make them more abstruse than the hardest proposition of the "Principia". What is far worse, by ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... accident of reflection or refraction, the snows of Monte Sfiorito had become bright green, as if the light that fell on them had passed through emeralds. They both paused, to gaze and marvel for a little. Indeed, the prospect was a pleasing one, as well as a surprising—the sunny lawns, the ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... broad as he was long; the cockpitonians dubbed him "Toby Philpot." He was an oddity, and fond of coining new words. He knew the ship had three masts and a sheet anchor. He was a strict disciple of Hamilton Moore, fond of arguing about dip and refraction, particularly the former, as he put it in practice on himself, being sometimes found with his head and heels at an angle of 30 degrees in consequence of dipping his head to too many north-westers. He was, however, good-natured, knew by rule how to put the ship in stays, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... was announced as the sea serpent, but its true nature was soon obvious. At midnight, March 1st, Nassau light hove in sight, dimmed by a thin, soft haze, which hung over the water, and through which the light, by some law of refraction, seemed to be coming out to meet the ship. Overhead all was bright,—almost dazzling with unnumbered stars and familiar constellations, like silver spangles on a background of blue velvet. We anchored off the island an hour before daylight, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... Sound. Sound Reflections. Resonance. Echos. Speaking Trumpet. The Stethoscope. The Vitascope. The Phonautograph. The Phonograph. Light. The Corpuscular Theory. Undulatory Theory. Luminous Bodies. Velocity of Light. Reflection. Refraction. Colors. The Spectroscope. The Rainbow. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... of distinguishing the elements taken from reality from those which are the work of imagination. To use Niebuhr's expression, a legend is "a mirage produced by an invisible object according to an unknown law of refraction." ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... Nature of these Vapours, and the Circumstance attending their Passage, they appear to us differently below. For if they be extremely subtile they mount very high, and there, according to the Sentiment of Sir Isaac Newton, form by Refraction the Azure, or blue Colour, that over-spreads the Sky in serene Weather. Clouds, while they remain visible, do not rise above the Height of a Mile; and we always observe, that the highest are of a very light Colour, and hardly seen. If, therefore, small Clouds increase, it shews, ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... on a bottom of fine sand, which makes it probable that most of the icebergs were aground in this place. In the afternoon we sailed within the edge of the ice, as much as a light westerly wind would admit, in order to approach the western land. Some curious effects of atmospheric refraction were observed this evening, the low ice being at times considerably raised in the horizon, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... resolved to give his whole time to mathematics. In 1741 he received his first public distinction in being admitted a member of the Academy of Sciences, to which he had previously presented several papers, including a Memoire sur le calcul integral (1739). In his Memoire sur le refraction des corps solides (1741) he was the first to give a theoretical explanation of the phenomenon which is witnessed when a body passes from one fluid to another more dense in a direction not perpendicular to the surface which ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the explanation is simple enough. Of the mirage the dictionary says it is "an optical illusion arising from an unequal refraction in the lower strata of the atmosphere, causing images of remote objects to be seen double, distorted or inverted as if reflected in a mirror, or to appear as if suspended in ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... from which all the other truths of the science are synthetically deduced (as the laws of motion and of the composition of forces in dynamics, the equal mobility of fluids in hydrostatics, the laws of reflection and refraction in optics, are the first principles of those sciences); but are merely necessary assumptions, self-evident indeed, and the denial of which would annihilate all demonstration, but from which, as premises, nothing can be demonstrated. In the present, as in many other instances, this ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... makes this little journey more pleasing than you can possibly conceive: the serene blue sky above, the dazling brightness of the sun, and the colors from the refraction of its rays on the transparent part of these ridges of ice, the winding course these oblige you to make, the sudden disappearing of a train of fifteen or twenty carrioles, as these ridges intervene, which again ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... after their introduction, the illustrious Kepler, in his work on "Optics," recommended the employment of plain apertures, without lenses, because they were superior to the telescope on account of their freedom from refraction. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... refracted than others. He likewise knows that more than a hundred years ago Mr. Dollond having found out, after many experiments, that some kinds of glass have the power of dispersing light, for each degree of its refraction, much more than other kinds, and that on the discovery of this fact he contrived to make telescopes in which he passed the light through two object-glasses successively, one of which he made of crown and one of flint glass, so ground and adapted to each other that the ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... goddess Iris, the messenger of the King of Olympus. In Hebrew, the rainbow is the witness to a covenant. In science, the rainbow is an analysis of white light into its constituent colors by the refraction of raindrops. ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... bunkers were replenished with bituminous coal from a seam in the cliff above Cape Lisburne, that an effort was made to reach the island. During the run westward—a distance of 245 miles—the fine weather enabled us to witness some curious freaks of refraction and other odd phenomena for which the high latitudes are so remarkable. On July 30, the fine weather continuing, everybody was correspondingly elate and merry when both Herald and Wrangel islands were ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... considerable depth when viewed from a point directly over them. An illustration familiar to every boy is to be found in the fact that he can see fish at the bottom of a clear stream from a bridge, while from the shore the refraction of the water is such that he can see nothing. From the air the aviator can readily see a submarine at a depth of fifty feet unless the water is unusually rough or turbid. The higher he rises the wider is his sphere ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... starboard hand shone a vision of the land; this time not in the sharp peaks and spires we had first seen, but in a chain of pale blue egg-shaped islands, floating in the air a long way above the horizon. This peculiar appearance was the result of extreme refraction, for, later in the day, we had an opportunity of watching the oval cloud-like forms gradually harden into the same pink tapering spikes which originally caused the island to be called Spitzbergen: nay, so clear did it become, that even the shadows ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... boldness of the experiment which launched such massive and complicated fabrics on the ocean. The pure water is a medium almost as transparent as the atmosphere, and the very keel is seen, usually so near the surface, in consequence of refraction, as to give us but a very indifferent opinion of the security of the whole machine. I do not remember ever looking at my own vessel, when at sea, from a boat, without wondering at my own folly ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... raies there are, which passing through the shadow, make her appeare in that ruddy colour: So that she must appeare brightest, when shee is eclipsed, being in her Apoge, of greatest distance from us, because then the cone of the earths shadow is lesse, and the refraction is made through a narrower medium. So on the contrary, she must be represented under a more darke and obscure forme when she is eclipsed, being in her Perige, or neerest to the earth, because then she is involved in a greater shadow, or bigger part of the cone, and so the refraction passing through ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... thus produced a very singular effect of refraction. As they walked, when they thought they were about to put foot on a hillock, they stepped down lower, which often occasioned falls, happily so little serious that Penellan made them occasions for bantering. Still, he told them never ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... scientists will have equipment and instruments, and now that they've got the beam they'll be able to try things. They'll do better than I did. They can try heterodyning the beam. They can try for interference effects. They may find something to reflect it, or they can try refraction." ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... farthest extremity faintly illuminated by the solar rays, before any part of the dark hemisphere was visible. Soon afterward, the whole dark limb became illuminated. This prolongation of the cusps beyond the semicircle, I thought, must have arisen from the refraction of the sun's rays by the moon's atmosphere. I computed, also, the height of the atmosphere (which could refract light enough into its dark hemisphere to produce a twilight more luminous than the light reflected from the earth when the moon is about ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... this field made by HERSCHEL, more particularly because his claims as a discoverer seem to have been strangely overlooked by historians of the development of physical science. He, before any other investigator, showed that radiant heat is refracted according to the laws governing the refraction of light by transparent media; that a portion of the radiation from the sun is incapable of exciting the sensation of vision, and that this portion is the less refrangible; that the different colors of the spectrum possess very unequal heating powers, which are not proportional to their ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... Atlantic gales—arid, bare, and without the slightest appearance of vegetable life. The inland prospect is shrouded over by a dense mirage, through which here and there are to be discovered the stems of a few distant palm-trees, so broken and disjoined by refraction that they present to the imagination anything but the idea of foliage or shade. The water in the bay is calm and smooth as the polished mirror; not the smallest ripple is to be heard on the beach, to break through the silence of nature; not a breath of air sweeps over its glassy surface, ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... that tempts one to believe the island has a special atmosphere of its own.... A friend tells me the phenomenon is probably due to inorganic substances floating in the air—each substance in diffusion having its own index of refraction. Substances so held in suspension by vapors would vary according to the nature of soil in different islands, and might thus produce special local effects of ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... is not infrequently very foggy. He seemed inclined to marvel that we did not find the sunlight too intense for our eyes, and was interested in my attempt to explain that the sky was tempered to a bluish colour through the refraction of the air, though I doubt if he clearly understood that. I explained how the iris of the human eyes can contract the pupil and save the delicate internal structure from the excess of sunlight, and ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... twilight, and 77 of perfect inky darkness (save when the moon has a northern declination) in the period of a typical year. During the period of a little over four days, the sun shines continuously on both the North and South Poles at the same time, owing to refraction parallax, semi-diameter, and dip ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... artistic genius lies in the power of conceiving humanity in a new and striking way, of putting a happy world of its own creation in place of the meaner world of our common days, generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, according to [214] the choice of the imaginative intellect. In exercising this power, painting and poetry have a variety of subject almost unlimited. The range of characters or persons open to them is as various ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... exactly the same effect that a similar occurrence had upon Hipparchus 1,700 years before. He felt it his duty to catalogue all the principal stars, so that there should be no mistake in the future. During the construction of his catalogue of 1,000 stars he prepared and used accurate tables of refraction deduced from his own observations. Thus he eliminated (so far as naked eye observations required) the effect of atmospheric refraction which makes the altitude of a star seem ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... of the rainbow by showing how the colours were elicited; but after all was Newton guilty? Why should a true knowledge of the cause destroy the poetry of an effect? Every effect must be produced somehow. The rainbow is not less beautiful in itself because I know that it is due to the refraction of light. The diamond loses none of its lustre although chemistry has proved it to be carbon; the heavens are still glorious even if the ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... freak of nature, the tendency of the channel of the Mississippi is always toward one or the other of its banks, being influenced by the direction of its bends. The principle is one of nicely regulated refraction. If the river were perfectly straight, the gravity and inertia of its waters would move in a right line, with a velocity beyond all control. But we find the river very sinuous, and the momentum of current consequently lessened. For example, striking in an arm of the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... platoon became a company for an instant under favorable light refraction. The object of British khaki, French blue and German green is invisibility, but nothing can be designed that will not be visible under certain conditions. A motley such as the "tanks" were painted would be best, but the most utilitarian of generals has not yet dared to suggest motley ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Indeed, Ratty, my love, you must study. I will give you the renowned Kirwan's book. Charlotte tore some of it for curl papers; but there's enough left to enlighten you with the sun's rays, and reflection and refraction—" ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I found it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying apparition. It seemed, however, to be a man standing upright ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... to this place, but he found so much to interest him in the cave while it was lighted a little by the borrowed gleam from the water, that he lingered there until, the sun moving on his course, the angle of refraction suddenly changed. The child had not the courage to take a plunge into the dark gulf, where there was no beacon to guide him, and where he might have struck against the rock. He therefore remained the rest of the day and all night in the cavern. When ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... looks at everything in larger angles than any other, and, by good right, should be the greatest man. But here comes in another trait; it is found, though his angles are of so generous contents, the lines do not meet; the apex is not quite defined. We must allow for the refraction of the lens, but it is the best instrument I have ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... sure. It will also keep the few adventurous discoverers in, where you can neither kill nor eject. Likewise you are deprived of your pipe; and the common homely comfort of spitting on your bait is totally denied you. The landscape takes on the prismatic colours of refraction, so that, while you can easily make out red, white, and blue Chinese dragons and mythological monsters, you are unable to discover the more welcome succulence, say, of a partridge on a limb. And the end of that head-net is to be picked to holes by the brush, and finally to be snatched from ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... same time the survey of the moon was being completed; she appeared riddled with craters, and her essentially volcanic nature was affirmed by each observation. From the absence of refraction in the rays of the planets occulted by her it is concluded that she can have no atmosphere. This absence of air entails absence of water; it therefore became manifest that the Selenites, in order to live under such conditions, must have ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... April that Harding had employed himself in fixing the orientation of the island, or, in other words, the precise spot where the sun rose. The day before he had noted exactly the hour when the sun disappeared beneath the horizon, making allowance for the refraction. This morning he noted, no less exactly, the hour at which it reappeared. Between this setting and rising twelve hours, twenty-four minutes passed. Then, six hours, twelve minutes after its rising, the sun on this day would exactly pass the meridian and the point ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne |
