Page:Collected Physical Papers.djvu/119

Rh effect of many such layers in a thick piece, the vibrations which are perpendicular to the direction of maximum conductivity are alone transmitted, the emergent beam being thus completely polarised.

A double-conducting structure will thus be seen to act as a polariser. I have here an artificial electric tourmaline, made of a bundle of parallel capillary glass fibres. The capillaries have been filled with dilute copper sulphate solution.

A simple, and certainly the most handy, polariser is one's outstretched fingers. I interpose my fingers at 45° between the crossed polariser and the analyser, and you observe the immediate restoration of the extinguished field of radiation.

While repeating these experiments I happened to have by me this old copy of 'Bradshaw', and it occurred to me that here was an excellent double-conducting structure which ought to polarise the electric ray. For looking at the edge of the book we see the paper continuous in one direction along the pages, whereas this continuity is broken across the pages by the interposed air-films. I shall now demonstrate the extraordinary efficiency of this book as an electric polariser. I hold it at 45° between the crossed gratings, and you observe the strong depolarisation effect produced. I now arrange the polariser and the analyser in a parallel position, and interpose the 'Bradshaw' with its edge parallel to the electric vibration; there is not the slightest action in the receiver, the book held in this particular direction being perfectly opaque to electric radiation. But on turning it round through 90°, the 'Bradshaw', usually so opaque, becomes quite transparent, as is indicated by the violent deflection of the galvanometer-spot of Rh