Micrographia - Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon by Robert Hooke
page 180 of 465 (38%)
page 180 of 465 (38%)
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suppose to be a body that does more resist it, and consequently more are
_re-percuss'd_ then do enter it: the same kind of trials have I made, with _Crystalline Glass_, with drops of fluid bodies, and several other ways, which do all seem to agree very exactly with this _Theory_. So that from this Principle well establish'd, we may deduce severall Corollaries not unworthy observation. And the first is; that it plainly appears by this, that the production of the Rainbow is as much to be ascribed to the reflection of the concave surface of the air, as to the refraction of the _Globular_ drops: this will be evidently manifest by these Experiments, if you _foliate_ that part of a Glass-ball that is to reflect an _Iris_, as in the _Cartesian_ Experiment, above mention'd, the reflections will be abundantly more strong, and the colours more vivid: and if that part of the surface be touch'd with Water, scarce affords any sensible colour at all. Next we learn, that the great reason why _pellucid_ bodies beaten small are white, is from the multitude of reflections, not from the particles of the body, but from the _contiguous_ surface of the air. And this is evidently manifested, by filling the _Interstitia_ of those powder'd bodies with Water, whereby their whiteness presently disappears. From the same reason proceeds the whiteness of many kinds of Sands, which in the _Microscope_ appear to be made up of a multitude of little _pellucid_ bodies, whose brightest reflections may by the _Microscope_ be plainly perceiv'd to come from their internal surfaces; and much of the whiteness of it may be destroy'd by the affusion of fair Water to be contiguous to those surfaces. The whiteness also of froth, is for the most part to be ascribed to the reflection of the light from the surface of the air within the Bubbles, and very little to the reflection from the surface of the Water it self: for |
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