Page:A history of the theories of aether and electricity. Whittacker E.T. (1910).pdf/201

 elastic solid by reason of the occurrence of the term in $$\partial e_x/\partial t$$. But this is evidently a "viscous" term, representing something like a frictional dissipation of the energy of luminous vibrations: a dissipation which, in fact, occasions the opacity of the metal. Thus the term which expresses opacity in the equation of motion of the luminiferous medium appears as the origin of the peculiarities of metallic reflexion. It is curious to notice how closely this accords with the idea of Huygens, that metals are characterized by the presence of soft particles which camp the vibrations of light.

There is, however, one great difficulty attending this explanation of metallic reflexion, which was first pointed out by Lord Rayleigh. We have seen that for ideal silver μ2 is real and negative: and therefore A must be zero and ρ1 negative; that is to say, the inertia of the luminiferous medium in the metal must be negative. This seems to destroy entirely the physical intelligibility of the theory as applied to the case of ideal silver.

The difficulty is a deep-seated one, and was not overcome for many years. The direction in which the true solution lies will suggest itself when we consider the resemblance which has already been noticed between metals and those substances which show "surface colour"—e.g. the aniline dyes. In the case of the latter substances, the light which is so copiously reflected from them lies within a restricted part of the spectrum; and it therefore seems probable that the phenomenon is not to be attributed to the existence of dissipative terms, but that it belongs rather to the same class of effects as dispersion, and is to be referred to the same causes. In fact, dispersion means that the value of the refractive index of a substance with respect to any kind of light depends on the period of the light; and we have only to suppose that the physical causes which operate in dispersion cause the refractive index