"Refraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have been 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 ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... of the rainbow? It is evident that what apparent things we see come to our eyes in right or in crooked lines, or by refraction: these are incorporeal and to sense obscure, but to reason they are obvious. Those which are seen in right lines are those which we see through the air or horn or transparent stones, for all the parts of these things are very fine and tenuous; but those which appear in crooked ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... they reacted upon his life; and I find it too subtle and involved and intricate for the doing. I find it taxes all my powers to convey even the main forms and forces in that development. It is like looking through moving media of changing hue and variable refraction at something vitally unstable. Broad theories and generalisations are mingled with personal influences, with prevalent prejudices; and not only coloured but altered by phases of hopefulness and moods of depression. The web is made up of the most diverse ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... forward after me, and having also passed the angle of refraction saw no more of the ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... each exhibiting its 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... parting from the brig we encountered a tropical storm. The sun rose red and angry, and owing to the great refraction appeared three times its natural size. It climbed lazily to the zenith, and at noon we were shadowless. The sky was as calm as a vault, and the surface of the water was like burnished steel. The heat became so stifling that even the Africans were gasping ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... and indistinct, but in the calm splendor of its own thallassphere. The first thought is one of unspeakable admiration of the miraculous beauty of everything around him—a glory and a splendor of refraction, interference and reflection that puts to shame the Arabian story of the kingdom of the Blue Fish. Above him is that pure golden canopy with its rare glimmering lustrousness—something like the soft, dewy effulgence that comes with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... 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, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?—But, referred to the sun, it is widest at its base, which is no greater than his own opacity. The divine light is diffused almost entirely around us, and by means of the refraction of light, or else by a certain self-luminousness, or, as some will have it, transparency, if we preserve ourselves untarnished, we are able to enlighten our shaded side. At any rate, our darkest grief has that bronze color ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... constructed a cylindrical lens in which the axis remains constant in direction and amount of refraction, while the refraction in the meridian at right ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... eyes, thinking that I was the victim of some hallucination, or that the refraction from the intense light produced an optical delusion; and, as I did so, the flaming pillar slowly twisted and thundered off whithersoever it passes to in the bowels of the great earth, leaving Ayesha standing where ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... 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
... years. She developed into an unusually attractive young woman, showing at times various mild nervous disturbances as well as character difficulties. Only occasionally has she worn the glasses which corrected her errors of refraction. During this time she has not been severely ill. She has a palpable thyroid which has hardly increased in size. When last seen she was notable for a very clear skin, good color, and bright eyes. Conjunctival and corneal reflexes much ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... 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 you ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... Another.—Epicurus, founder of the Epicurean philosophy. He lived B. C. about 300 years. [29] Water crooks a stick.—An allusion to the bent appearance which a stick has in water, consequent upon the refraction of light. [30] The wars.—This fable appears to have been composed about the beginning of the year 1677. The European powers then found themselves exhausted by wars, and desirous of peace. England, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... sun's refraction—that is, the variation of the rays of light from their direct course, occasioned by the difference of density ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... little unctuous. Stepping through the gateway with the morning sun behind me, I saw at each step a fresh circle of dewdrops gleam, some ruby, some emerald, some brightly white, at the same distance in front. The angle of refraction advanced as I moved; there was a point at which the dewdrop shot back a brilliant ray, and then became invisible, or appeared a mere drop ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... 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
... 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 Mission • Frederick Marryat
... young friend, E. W. 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 ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... revolving light, might be 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 put into rapid motion, every degree of the three hundred and ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... but found it difficult in consequence of the allowance necessary for the refraction of the water and the movement of the fish. There is a great temptation to strike in an apparently direct line with the fish, which I need hardly say, even if the fish be stationary does not go near it. I only succeeded in piercing two. But I afterwards went ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... every commander has to deal with some refraction of this kind of problem. When it comes, moralizing and generalizing about the weakness of human nature does no good whatever. To call the man a fool is as invidious as to waste indignation upon the cause of his misfortune. Likewise, any frontal approach to ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... of a volume of Tycho's great work "Introduction to the New Astronomy". The first volume, devoted to the new star of 1572, was not ready, because the reduction of the observations involved so much research to correct the star places for refraction, precession, etc.; it was not completed in fact until Tycho's death, but the second volume, dealing with the comet of 1577, was printed at Uraniborg and some copies were issued in 1588. Besides the comet observations it included ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... the logical ones of identity, similarity, or analogy. If you know a 'law,' you may discharge your memory of masses of particular instances, for the law will reproduce them for you whenever you require them. The law of refraction, for example: If you know that, you can with a pencil and a bit of paper immediately discern how a convex lens, a concave lens, or a prism, must severally alter the appearance of an object. But, if you don't know the general law, you must charge your memory ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... discovered new excellences in the wonderful metal. Its properties of translucence and refraction enabled skilful artists to perform marvels. By suitable management a chain of artemisium could be made to resemble a string of vari-colored gems, each separate link having a tint of its own, while, as the wearer moved, delicate complementary colors chased one another, in ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... and medicine, but finding no satisfaction in either of these professions, with the true instincts of the scholar he chose poverty with liberty to pursue the studies he loved. He astonished the scientific world by his first published works, 'Memoir on the Integral Calculus' (1739) and 'On the Refraction of Solid Bodies' (1741); and while not yet twenty-four years old, the brilliant young mathematician was made a member of the French Academy of Sciences. In 1754 he entered the Academie Francaise, and eighteen years later became ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 on left and right, abandoned his ground, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... carried obliquely from one obtuse corner of the prism to the other, in the direction of its length. The surfaces of this section, after having been carefully polished, are cemented together again by means of Canada balsam. A ray of light, on entering the prism, is separated by the double refraction of the calc-spar into an ordinary and an extraordinary ray; the former undergoes total reflection at the layer of balsam at an incidence which allows the extraordinary ray to be transmitted; the latter, therefore, passes through unchanged. This principle of obtaining a single ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... the whole fabric is warped and bent at a thousand angles,—it is not only the quality of the ancient glass, nor its colour, that gives this unattainable expression to these windows, but the accidental warping and wear of centuries have laid each bit of glass at a different angle, so that the refraction of the light is quite different from any possible reflection on the smooth surface of ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... are entirely different. As we ascend the air becomes rarer. It has less moisture, because a wet atmosphere, being heavier, lies nearer the surface of the earth. Being rarer the action of sunlight on the particles is less intense. Reflection and refraction of the rays acting on the light atmosphere do not produce such a powerful effect as on the air ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... 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
... grass is burnt in spring and autumn so as to kill off the old tufts and allow of the new shoots growing for hay. The fires look like one long streak of quivering flame, the forked tips of which flash and quiver in the horizon, magnified by refraction, and on a dark night are lovely. In the day-time one only sees volumes of smoke which break the monotony of the landscape, though I don't know that it is picturesque. With a slight breeze the fires spread in a marvellous way, ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... go to bed. She had no nerves: she saw life in its proper colours without refraction. The dreadful scene at Wancote had made its full impression on her, but she was not beset like Hyde by visions of what might have been. Still she was tired and subdued, and when Verney had dressed her arm she announced her intention of spending the afternoon in the garden out of the way of ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... the same 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 be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... scientific subjects to give definitions which can be rendered intelligible only by an intimate acquaintance with the very matters defined. It would be tedious to enumerate the countless absurd explanations given in elementary text-books of the phenomena of interference, polarization, and double refraction,—explanations as enigmatical as the inscriptions at Memphis and Karnak,—explanations useless to the optician because needless, and to the student because obscure. It would seem that subjects so simple and beautiful as these could not be rendered difficult of comprehension, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... words, 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 the scenery of his ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... would appear a rayless orb of fire in the midst of a black concave. The equal diffusion of its light on earth is owing to the refraction of the rays by the atmosphere, and their reflection from other bodies. Light consists either of vibrations propagated through a subtle medium, or of numerous minute particles repelled in all directions from the luminous body. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... smaller percentage is delivered in the beam. Mangin in 1874 made a reflector of glass in which both outer and inner surfaces were spherical but of different radii of curvature, so that the reflector was thicker in the middle. This device was "silvered" on the outside and the refraction in the glass, as the light passed through it to the mirror and back again, corrected the spherical aberration of the mirrored surface. These have been extensively used. Many combinations of curved surfaces have been developed for special projection purposes, but the parabolic ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... 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 and believe ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... the hitherto unexplored domains of nature what reason demanded, that Goethe, from the analogies of the mammalian skeleton, discovered the intermaxillary bone in man; and Sir William Hamilton, from the mathematical consequences of the undulation of light, led the way to the discovery of conical refraction. A similar story is told of Prof. Agassiz and Prof. Pierce, the one the great zooelogist, the other the great mathematician, of Cambridge. Agassiz, having studied the formation of radiate animals, and having found them all referable to three different plans of structure, asked Prof. Pierce, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... 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 death had been, not ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... sight, without the slightest alteration in the line of vision, he will find that it takes in the entire breadth of a large room, and that up to a very short distance before him; and imperfectly, by a refraction, I believe, in the eye itself, to a point very near indeed. Next to nothing that passed in the room, ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... was sinking fast and 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
... the side of least resistance. Within a refracting body the ether is rarefied, not only by the proximity of the atoms of the body (or its density), but also by the motions of those atoms; so that if two simple gases of different specific gravity be made equal in density by compression, their refraction will be approximately as their specific heats. In the case of solids and liquids, or even compound gases, there is a continual absorption of motion to produce the cohesion of composition and aggregation. And the specific heats ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... the custom with a great many if not the majority of opticians to fit a customer without knowing whether he has presbyopia, hypermetropia, or any of the other errors of refraction. Their method is first to try a convex, and if this does not improve, a concave, etc., until the proper one is found. This, of course, amounts to the same thing if the right glass is found. But in practice it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... the great—brilliancy—and refraction of light, on this angle, where the stone has got polished by rubbing against other stones, in the course of ages, I'm inclined to think ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... the Weather Man said, "the sun has gone below the horizon at least two minutes before you see it disappear. You're looking at a sun that isn't there at all. That's due to refraction. The reason of the pink glow is that when you see it, the earth and the air for several thousand feet above you are in the shadow of the edge of the earth. The sun, therefore, is not shining on the thicker dust of the lower part of the air, but the finer ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... in July than in September. R. Hooke, in 1674, pubilshed his observations of g Draconis, a star of the second magnitude which passes practically overhead in the latitude of London, and whose observations are therefore singularly free from the complex corrections due to astronomical refraction, and concluded that this star was 23" more northerly in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... his whims. If you want to know how to account for yourself, study the characters of your relations. All of our brains squint more or less. There is not one in a hundred, certainly, that does not sometimes see things distorted by double refraction, out of plumb or out of focus, or with colors which do not belong to it, or in some way betraying that the two halves of the brain are not acting in harmony with each other. You wonder at the eccentricities of this or that connection of your own. Watch yourself, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Providence and their own exertions from the jaws of a horrible death. They awoke and looked at each other, the very gaze of despair was appalling; far as the eye could reach, no object could be discerned; the bright haze of the morning added to the strong refraction of light; one smooth, interminable plain, one endless ocean, one cloudless sky and one burning sun, were all they had to gaze upon. The boat lay like the ark, in a world alone! They had no oar, no mast and no sail, nothing but the bare planks and themselves, without provisions or water, food ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... a slave. And I had hardly worked and thought about the matter six months before light came through one of the meshes suddenly—blindingly! I found a general principle of pigments and refraction—a formula, a geometrical expression involving four dimensions. Fools, common men, even common mathematicians, do not know anything of what some general expression may mean to the student of molecular ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... 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 Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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, and constantly ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... plane high in the sky. What chance has one to detect a machine that is perfectly transparent when there is nothing but perfectly transparent air around it? It is a curious property of this vibrational system of invisibility that the index of refraction is made very low. It is not the same as that of air, but the difference is so slight that it is practically within the limits of observation error; so small is the difference that there is no 'rainbow' effect. The difference of temperature of the ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... 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
... intended, or only an arrangement whereby light was for the first time introduced to the earth's surface. The idea of creating light not only involves the Divine Conception of the thing, and the marvellous method of its production,[1] but doubtless, also, all those wonderful laws of reflection, refraction, polarization, and a thousand others, which the ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... 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
... said the captain quietly. "Sit down. You have heard of refraction. It is a peculiar state of the air. I daresay we look the same to them. Pull, my lads. I'm afraid the mist will be down upon us before we can reach ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... behold! round the sun in the west there arises a perfect solar halo, very similar to an ordinary rainbow, but smaller in its arc and fainter in its hues of yellow and rose—a very beautiful phenomenon, and one seldom to be seen in England. Halos of this nature are supposed to arise from the double refraction of the rays from the sun as the light passes through thin clouds, or from the transmission of light through particles of ice. It lingers a full quarter of an hour, and then dies away. Does this bode rough weather? Surely the cruel Boreas and the frost ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... alcoholism. Some explanation was sought on 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 myopia and also most normal sight. It ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... all cautions regarding style arising out of so many [36] natural scruples as to the medium through which alone he can expose that inward sense of things, the purity of this medium, its laws or tricks of refraction: nothing is to be left there which might give conveyance to any matter save that. Style in all its varieties, reserved or opulent, terse, abundant, musical, stimulant, academic, so long as each is really ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... of each other, and rendered their walls hideous with bad likenesses of all their friends. Their conversation ceased to be intelligible to the uninitiated, and they prattled prettily of "chiaro oscuro, French sauce, refraction of the angle of the eye, seventh spinus process, depth and juiciness of color, tender touch, and a good tone." Even in dress the artistic disorder was visible; some cast aside crinoline altogether, and stalked about with a severe simplicity of outline worthy of Flaxman. Others flushed themselves ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... her look as cold as the wet marble she stood on, her dark eyes seemed to gleam with a 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 ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... had been brilliantly fine. The bergs had absolutely duplicated and inverted themselves by reflection, so that the sunlit pinnacles became submarine fires, and refraction stepped in to reverse, and as it were shatter, the floes on the horizon, while three mock suns glowed in the heavens at the same time—thus making the beautiful confusion still ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Composition.—Reference should 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... 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 ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... which God's agency is declared and His ownership asserted. 'I do set My bow.' Neither Noah nor the writer knew anything about refraction or the prismatic spectrum. But perhaps they knew more about the rainbow than people do who know all about how it comes, except that God sets it in the cloud, and that it is His. Let us have the facts which science labels as such, by all means, and the more ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... day the horizon was occupied by haze, and produced a very remarkable effect upon the land, which was so raised above the horizon by refraction that many distant objects became visible that could not otherwise have been seen. This mirage had been frequently observed by us on various parts of the coast, but never produced so extraordinary an ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... 'self-praise is no accommodation,' as the proverb says. You see, sir, I couldn't be happy when you was gone. I missed my dear young master so much. People wondered what was amiss with me, when they found me, as they often did, in a state of refraction. 'Why, Juniper,' they'd say, 'what's amiss? Are you grieving after Mr Frank?' I could only nod dissent; my heart was too full. But I mustn't be too long, a- keeping you too, sir, under the vertebral rays of an Australian sun. I just couldn't stand it no longer—so I gets together ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... And this double 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 personal conscience he was answerable for his private honour and his ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... mind becomes atrophied in a defective body. Quasimodo was barely conscious of a soul cast in his own image, moving blindly within him. The impressions of objects underwent a considerable refraction before reaching his mind. His brain was a peculiar medium; the ideas which passed through it issued forth completely distorted. The reflection which resulted from this refraction was, necessarily, divergent ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Ross continued his survey of the horizon, all of which was visible except a small portion obscured by the rise of the conning-tower. The air was remarkably clear. Taking into consideration the refraction of the atmosphere, the navigation lamps of a vessel shown at twenty feet above the sea would be visible from the low-lying deck of the submarine at a distance of six ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... 21st November, and it reappeared on the 19th January. On the 15th May the sun no longer set. The temperature was then under the freezing point of mercury. That the upper edge of the sun should be visible on the 19th January we must assume a horizontal refraction of nearly 1 deg.. The islands on the Yenisej are so low that there was probably a pretty ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... 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 ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... suddenly compared with the red rays than happened with the crown-glass 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 the letters are edged with coloured bands, proving that the lens ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... not 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 ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... mathematics; in an age when experimenting was sure to cost a man his reputation, and was likely to cost him his life, he insisted on experimenting, and braved all its risks. Few greater men have lived. As we follow Bacon's process of reasoning regarding the refraction of light, we see ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... sand, which has come inward from the sea, and prevents the mud's escape—banks parted by narrow gullies, the delight of the gunner with his punt, haunted by million wild-fowl in winter, and in summer hazy steaming flats, beyond which the trees of Lincolnshire loom up, raised by refraction far above the horizon, while the masts and sails of distant vessels quiver, fantastically distorted and lengthened, sometimes even inverted, by a refraction like that which plays such tricks with ships and coasts in the Arctic seas. Along the top of the mud banks lounge the long black ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... pacing with 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 ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... the 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 involving a simple ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... destiny begins drawing with a bolder hand. Suppose the Japanese were to make up their minds to accelerate whatever process of synthesis were possible in China! Suppose, after all, I am not the victim of atmospheric refraction, and they are, indeed, as gallant and bold and intelligent as my baseless conception of them would have them be! They would almost certainly find co-operative elements among the educated Chinese.... But this is no doubt the lesser probability. In front and rear of China the English ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... on in a straight line 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 ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... from which it rose; at the nightward edge, once in eighty-eight days, the sun peeps above the horizon and quickly sinks from sight again. The result is that, neglecting the effects of atmospheric refraction, which would tend to expand the borders of the domain of sunlight, about one quarter of the entire surface of Mercury is, with regard to day and night, in a condition resembling that of our polar regions, where there is but one day and one night in the course of a year—and on ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... symmetry of the liquid figures, known to be produced in the planes of freezing, when radiant heat is sent through ice, we may safely infer symmetry of aggregation, and hence conclude that the line perpendicular to the planes of freezing is a line of no double refraction; that it is, in fact, the optic axis of the crystal. The same remark applies to the line joining the opposite blunt angles of a crystal of Iceland spar. The arrangement of the molecules round this line being symmetrical, the condition of the ether depending upon these molecules shares their ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... opening. A mixture of gases is exhaled, which, being heavier than the atmosphere, fills it up to the level of the entrance; and when the sun is shining into the cave, one can see the gaseous fumes swaying to and fro, owing to the difference of refraction. ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... heavens and earth seemed to give a full 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; ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... 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 greater than it ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... 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 ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... observatories we employ telescopes of two entirely different classes. The more familiar forms are those known as refractors, in which the operation of condensing the rays of light is conducted by refraction. The character of the refractor is shown in Fig. 1. The rays from the star fall upon the object-glass at the end of the telescope, and on passing through they become refracted into a converging beam, so that all intersect at the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... 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 celestial figures; ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... Leyden, introduced the true method of measuring the degrees of longitude and latitude, and Huygens, who had seen his manuscripts, asserted that Snellius had invented, before Descartes, the doctrine of refraction. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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
... from unity rather than arrives at it; and the order which it appears to discover subsequently in an experience which at first is manifold and incoherent is only a refraction of the original unity through the prism of a spontaneous analysis. Mr Bergson admirably points out ("Creative Evolution", pages 240-244 and 252-257.) that there are two types of order, geometric and vital, the one a static hierarchy of relations, ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... to remark that as another result of the thinness of the Martian atmosphere twilight is much shorter than on the earth, the light being less diffused when the sun is below the horizon, and refraction also considerably ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... 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 ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... present sense. The mineral had, however, long been known under the names calcareous spar and calc-spar, and the beautifully transparent variety called Iceland-spar had been much studied. The strong double refraction and perfect cleavages of Iceland-spar were described in detail by Erasmus Bartholinus in 1669 in his book Experimenta Crystalli Islandici disdiaclastici; the study of the same mineral led Christiaan Huygens to discover in 1690 the laws of double refraction, and E.L. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... kill them with arrows; but they swam too deep, and, somehow or another, he always missed them. The fact was that Ossaroo was not practised in shooting fish with the arrow; and not understanding any thing about optics or the laws of refraction, he missed his mark ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... 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 gratification, in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Pennsylvania; Professor of Optics and Refraction; formerly Physician in Philadelphia Hospital; Member of Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania State and ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... guilt came from the pale image of it lifted above her horizon by the refraction of her sympathy. She did not know, perhaps never would understand the ghastly horror of conscious guilt, besides which there is no evil else. Agonies of injury a man may endure, and, so far from being overwhelmed, rise above them tenfold ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... 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 perspective ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... 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 never refer to it, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... the crystalline lens becomes opaque and loses its transparency, the power of refraction is lost—the animal can ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... entirely in the Earth's cone of shadow; the solar rays are refracted round our globe by our atmosphere, and curving inward, illumine the lunar globe with a rosy tint that reminds one of the sunset. Sometimes, indeed, this refraction does not occur, owing doubtless to lack of transparency in the atmosphere, and the Moon becomes invisible. This happened ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... 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 ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... then about ten o'clock in the morning, and the rays of the sun struck the surface of the waves at rather an oblique angle; at the touch of the light, decomposed by [v]refraction as through a prism, flowers, rocks, plants, and shells were shaded at the edges by the seven solar colors. It was a marvelous feast for the eyes, this complication of colored tints, a perfect [v]kaleidoscope of green, yellow, orange, violet, indigo, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... how it was that when they made a vigorous thrust with their spear at a great big, quiet fish it seemed to strike some place a couple of feet or so away from the fish. So they found that the law of refraction had to be considered, and after a few experiments they did better. Each was successful in securing some fine fish. Some, indeed, were so large that, after the boys had plunged their spears into them, they required the help of the Indians to get ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... 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 ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... a curious sensation of having stepped into an old Flemish painting. The hall in which he stood was cool and rather dark, though a bright refraction of light tossed from some upper window upon a tall mirror filled the shadow with broken spangles. Through an open doorway at the rear was the green glimmer of a garden. In front of him was a mahogany sideboard. On its ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... business now is not with the inconsistency of the objectors to John and Jesus, but simply with this caricature which He quotes from them of some of His characteristics. It is a distorted refraction of the beam of light that comes from His face, through the muddy, thick medium of their prejudice. And if we can, I was going to say, pull it straight again, we shall see something of His glories. I take the two clauses of my text ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 'A refraction of the rays according to the altitude of the orb,' observed the baroness in a tone of assent, and she smiled to herself at the condition of the man who could accept it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
