Page:Collected Physical Papers.djvu/51



In my previous paper, read before the Royal Society on October 20, 1895, I described a method of determining the indices of refraction of various substances for electric radiation, the principle of which depends on the determination of the critical angle at which total reflection takes place. A semi-cylinder of the given substance was taken, and the angle of incidence gradually increased till the rays were totally reflected. The experiment was repeated with two semi-cylinders, separated by a parallel air-space. The advantage of the latter arrangement was that the image cast by the two semi-cylinders remained fixed. The image underwent sudden extinction when the angle of incidence attained the critical value.

The determination of the indices of refraction for long electric waves derives additional interest from Maxwell's theoretical relation between the dielectric constant and the refractive index for infinitely long waves. The relation K = μ2 has, however, been found to be fulfilled in only a few instances. The value μ is usually deduced from Cauchy's formula, which is admittedly faulty when applied to rays below the visible spectrum. It would therefore be of interest to be able to measure directly the index for long electric waves, and compare it with the value of K for rapidly alternating electric fields, the periodicity of which is preferably of the same order as that of the electric waves for which the index is determined.