Page:Young - Outlines of experiments and inquiries respecting sound and light (1800).djvu/30

 sation. When d comes to H, the impression will be, either wholly or partly, reflected with the same velocity as it arrived, and EH will be equal to DH; the angle EIH to DIH or CIF; and the angle of reflection to that of incidence. Let FG, Fig. 30, be a refracting surface. The portion of the pulse IE, which is travelling through the refracting medium, will move with a greater or less velocity in the subduplicate ratio of the densities, and HE will be to KI in that ratio. But HE is, to the radius IH, the sine of the angle of refraction; and KI that of the angle of incidence. This explanation of refraction is nearly the same as that of. The total reflection of a ray of light by a refracting surface, is explicable in the same manner as its simple refraction; HE, Fig. 31, being so much longer than KI, that the ray first becomes parallel to FG, and then, having to return through an equal diversity of media, is reflected in an equal angle. When a ray of light passes near an inflecting body, surrounded, as all bodies are supposed to be, with an atmosphere of ether denser than the ether of the ambient air, the part of the ray nearest the body is retarded, and of course the whole ray inflected towards the body, Fig. 32. The repulsion of inflected rays has been very ably controverted by Mr., the ingenious author of a late publication on the Inflection of Light. It has already been conjectured by, that the colours of light consist in the different frequency of the vibrations of the luminous ether: it does not appear that he has supported this opinion by any argument; but it is strongly confirmed, by the analogy between the colours of a thin plate and the sounds of a series of organ pipes. The phænomena of the colours of thin plates require, in the system, a very complicated supposition, of an ether, anticipating by its