Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/452

1857.] medium of higher optic force be required, it would probably be supplied by the use of that dangerous fluid, phosphorus dissolved in sulphide of carbon. A rectangular glass cell being provided, which did not itself affect the polarized ray, was placed in its course and filled to a certain height with sulphide of carbon. A plate of crown-glass was then introduced perpendicularly to the ray; it did not affect it; being inclined as before described, the effect on the ray was still insensible, the glass appearing to be, for all ordinary observations such as mine, quite as the medium about it. I could now introduce gold-leaf attached to glass into the course of the polarized ray, its condition as a flat film or plane being far finer than when stretched on a wire ring as before. It proved to be so far above the sulphide of carbon, as to have powers of depolarization apparently as great as those it had in air, and being inclined, brought in the image at the analyser exceedingly well. It was indeed very striking to see, when the plate was moved parallel to itself, the darkness when mere glass intervened, and the light which sprung up when the gold-leaf came into its place; the opake metal and the transparent glass having apparently changed characters with each other. By care I was able to introduce a stretched piece of gold-leaf (without glass) into the sulphide of carbon; its effects were the same with those just described.

In all the experiments to be described, the plane of a polarization and the plane of inclination had the same relation to each other: the figure shows the position of the polarizing Nicol prism, as the eye looks through it at the light, and a, b represents the vertical axis, about which the plates were inclined. Whether they were inclined in one direction or the other, or had the glass face or the metal face towards the eye, made no difference. In all cases with gold-leaf, it was found that the ray had been rotated; that it required a little direct rotation of the analyser to regain the minimum light; that short of that red tints appeared, and beyond it blue or cold, these being necessarily affected in some degree by the green colour of the gold-leaf. Thinned gold-leaf produced the same results; but as holes appeared in those that were thinnest, the results were interfered with, because the light passing through them was affected by the analyser in a different manner, and yet mingled