Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/468

462 ways, and so by the latter returned into that course from which the former had diverted it. For, by this means, I thought the regular effects of the first prism would be destroyed by the second, but the irregular ones more augmented, by the multiplicity of refractions. The event was, that the light, which by the first prism was diffused into an oblong form, was by the second reduced into an orbicular one, with as much regularity as when it did not at all pass through them. So that, whatever was the cause of that length, it was not any contingent irregularity.

I then proceeded to examine more critically, what might be effected by the difference of the incidence of rays coming from divers parts of the sun; and to that end measured the several lines and angles, belonging to the image. Its distance from the hole or prism was 22 feet; its utmost length 13 inches; its breadth 2; the diameter of the hole of an inch; the angle, which the rays, tending towards the middle of the image, made with those lines in which they would have proceeded without refraction, was 44° 56′. And the vertical angle of the prism, 63° 12′. Also the refractions on both sides the prism, that is, of the incident and emergent rays, were as near as I could make them equal, and consequently about 54° 4′. And the rays fell perpendicularly upon the wall. Now subducting the diameter of the hole from the length and breadth of the image, there remains 13 inches the length, and 2 the breadth, comprehended by those rays, which passed through the centre of the said hole, and consequently the angle of the hole, which that breadth subtended, was about 31′, answerable to the sun's diameter; but the angle which its length subtended, was more then five such diameters, namely 2° 49′.

Having made these observations, I first computed from them the refractive power of that glass, and found it measured by the ratio of the sines, 20 to 31. And then, by that ratio, I computed the refractions of two rays flowing from opposite parts of the sun's discus, so as to differ 31′ in their obliquity of incidence, and found that the emergent rays should have comprehended an angle of about 31′, as they did, before they were incident. But because this computation was founded on the hypothesis of the proportionality of the sines of incidence and refraction, which though, by my own experience, I could not imagine to be so erroneous as to make that angle but 31', which in reality was 2° 49′; yet my curiosity caused me again to take my prism. And having placed it at my window, as before, I observed, that by turning it a little about its axis to and fro, so as to vary its obliquity to the light, more than an angle of 4 or 5 degrees, the colours were not thereby sensibly translated from their place on the wall, and consequently by that variation of incidence, the quantity of refraction was not sensibly varied. By this experiment therefore, as well as