"Refraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shone a vision of the land; this time not in the sharp peaks and spires we had first seen, but in a chain of pale blue egg-shaped islands, floating in the air a long way above the horizon. This peculiar appearance was the result of extreme refraction, for, later in the day, we had an opportunity of watching the oval cloud-like forms gradually harden into the same pink tapering spikes which originally caused the island to be called Spitzbergen: nay, so clear did ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... is largely used in making chemical glassware, since it resists the action of reagents better than the softer sodium glass. If lead oxide is substituted for the whole or a part of the lime, the glass is very soft, but has a high index of refraction and is valuable for making optical ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... conditions are entirely different. As we ascend the air becomes rarer. It has less moisture, because a wet atmosphere, being heavier, lies nearer the surface of the earth. Being rarer the action of sunlight on the particles is less intense. Reflection and refraction of the rays acting on the light atmosphere do not produce such a powerful effect as on the ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... experiments made by the pupil, and this book, by considering the difficulty of costly apparatus, has rendered an important service to teacher and student alike. It deals with the sources of light, reflection, refraction, and decomposition of light. The experiments are extremely simple and well suited to ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... but if it, in passing from one medium to another of different density, fall obliquely, it is bent from its direct course and recedes from it, either towards the right or left, and this bending is called refraction; (see Fig. 3, b.) If a ray of light passes from a rarer into a denser medium it is refracted towards a perpendicular in that medium; but if it passes from a denser into rarer it is bent further from a perpendicular in that medium. Owing to ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... is to be done?" True for her that there followed gentle feelings, and gentler yet in her attendance on her patron's obsequies, in the discovery that all of which he died possessed he'd left to her, but it is the duller surfaces that are slowest to give refraction, the least used springs that are least pliant. She was come a long road from her first signs of hardening. She was past, now, the stage where, when grieving for the little old man, she would have felt contrition that her first thought at his ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... a curious sensation of having stepped into an old Flemish painting. The hall in which he stood was cool and rather dark, though a bright refraction of light tossed from some upper window upon a tall mirror filled the shadow with broken spangles. Through an open doorway at the rear was the green glimmer of a garden. In front of him was a mahogany sideboard. On its polished top lay two books, a box of cigars, and a cut glass decanter ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... active in its subtle (four-dimensional) vehicle, and ranges free throughout the ampler spaces of this subtler world. In deep sleep, consciousness reverts to its pure condition—the individual self becomes the All-Self: the rainbow, no longer prismatic by reason of its refraction in materiality, becomes the pure white light; the melody of life resolves itself into the primordial harmony; sequence becomes simultaneity, and Time, no longer "besprent with seven-hued circumstance," ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... musical execution. Similarly the Adagio, developed, as Beethoven has developed it in the third movement of his Ninth Symphony, may be taken as the basis of all regulations as to musical time. In a certain delicate sense the Allegro may be regarded as the final result of a refraction (Brechung) of the pure Adagio-character by the more restless moving figuration. On careful examination of the principal motives of the Allegro it will be found that the melody (Gesang) derived from the Adagio, predominates. The most important ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... ponds I have never seen satisfactorily explained. They have usually been attributed to a refraction, by which a section of the bordering sky is thrown below the horizon; but I am convinced that they are the effect of reflection. It seems that a gas (emanating probably from the heated earth and ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... was the first one to invent a wireless coherer and an instrument for indicating the refraction of electric waves. But the Indian scientist did not exploit his inventions commercially. He soon turned his attention from the inorganic to the organic world. His revolutionary discoveries as a plant physiologist are outpacing even his radical ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... last time on the 21st November, and it reappeared on the 19th January. On the 15th May the sun no longer set. The temperature was then under the freezing point of mercury. That the upper edge of the sun should be visible on the 19th January we must assume a horizontal refraction of nearly 1 deg.. The islands on the Yenisej are so low that there was probably a pretty open horizon towards ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... skylight, the greatest stumbling-block has hitherto been, that, in accordance with the law of Brewster, which makes the index of refraction the tangent of the polarising angle, the reflection which produces perfect polarisation would require to be made in air upon air; and indeed this led many of our most eminent men, Brewster himself among ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... ascending and descending, which Fracastorius records of his friend Baptista Tirrianus. Weak sight and a vain persuasion withal, may effect as much, and second causes concurring, as an oar in water makes a refraction, and seems bigger, bended double, &c. The thickness of the air may cause such effects, or any object not well-discerned in the dark, fear and phantasy will suspect to be a ghost, a devil, &c. [2702]Quod nimis miseri timent, hoc ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... that the highest divine being of American or African native peoples has been borrowed from Europeans, and is, especially, a savage refraction from the God of missionaries. If this can be proved, the shadowy, practically powerless "Master of Life" of certain barbaric peoples, will have degenerated from the Christian conception, because of that conception he will be only a faint unsuccessful refraction. He has been ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... here among solid surroundings, than in the plane high in the sky. What chance has one to detect a machine that is perfectly transparent when there is nothing but perfectly transparent air around it? It is a curious property of this vibrational system of invisibility that the index of refraction is made very low. It is not the same as that of air, but the difference is so slight that it is practically within the limits of observation error; so small is the difference that there is no 'rainbow' effect. The difference of temperature of the air would ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... see is explained in the same way as are the things that took place in the other experiments in refraction, or bending of light. The light from the part of the pencil above the water comes straight to your eye, of course; so you see it just as it is. But the light from the part of the pencil in the water is bent when ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... was determined to make the attempt. I rowed up the lake, occasionally turning my head to see if the game had taken the alarm. The sun was hot and dazzling; and as the bright scarlet was magnified by refraction, I fancied for a long time they were flamingoes. This fancy was dissipated as I drew near. The outlines of the bills, like the blade of a sabre, convinced me they were the ibis; besides, I now saw that they were less than three feet in height, while the flamingoes ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... till after the coal bunkers were replenished with bituminous coal from a seam in the cliff above Cape Lisburne, that an effort was made to reach the island. During the run westward—a distance of 245 miles—the fine weather enabled us to witness some curious freaks of refraction and other odd phenomena for which the high latitudes are so remarkable. On July 30, the fine weather continuing, everybody was correspondingly elate and merry when both Herald and Wrangel islands were sighted from the "cro'-nest" ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... time, that we are apt to think of Lincoln as of the long ago, as almost a contemporary of Washington and of the Revolutionary fathers. The immensity of the history which has been crowded into those forty-five years has distorted our mental vision, as ordinary objects are sometimes distorted by refraction. Yet when we reflect, the distortion disappears. But the wonder still remains. The years during which the deeds of Lincoln have been a memory to us do not carry us back to the early days of our own country. They do not carry us back even to the time ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... out in two long streamers feathering off into space. The opinion has been that this light was due to an atmosphere extending millions of miles from the sun. According to Dr. Hastings' view, it must be light from the sun which has undergone refraction, i.e., which has been bent from its regular course by the interposition of an opaque body ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... keys on a very small computer. He'd gotten an index-of-refraction reading on crystals too small to be seen except through a microscope. That information, plus specific gravity, plus crystalline form, plus rate of diffusion in a fractionator, went to the stores of information in the computer's memory banks somewhere ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I found it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying apparition. It seemed, however, to be a man standing upright in a sort of flat-bottomed boat, ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... scientific subjects to give definitions which can be rendered intelligible only by an intimate acquaintance with the very matters defined. It would be tedious to enumerate the countless absurd explanations given in elementary text-books of the phenomena of interference, polarization, and double refraction,—explanations as enigmatical as the inscriptions at Memphis and Karnak,—explanations useless to the optician because needless, and to the student because obscure. It would seem that subjects so simple and beautiful as these could not be rendered difficult ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... it is not diaphanous convinces me that it is a dense vapor formed by the calorification of ascending moisture dephlogisticated by refraction. A few endiometrical experiments would confirm this, but it is not necessary. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... scamps were diving down after it, racing to see which would get first to the coin. This soon disappeared in the disturbed water, while the figures of the boys grew more and more shadowy and distorted by the varying refraction. ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... shore and of the Orinoco are so distant that they cannot be seen, as in the Mesa de Pavones. A person would be tempted there to take the altitude of the sun with a quadrant, if the horizon of the land were not constantly misty on account of the variable effects of refraction. This equality of surface is still more perfect in the meridian of Calabozo, than towards the east, between Cari, La Villa del Pao, and Nueva Barcelona; but it extends without interruption from the mouths of the Orinoco to La Villa ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the foghorn much better: the presence of different layers of fog and air, and their varying densities, which cause both reflection and refraction of sound, prevent the air from being a reliable medium for carrying it. Now, submarine signalling has none of these defects, for the medium is water, subject to no such variable conditions as the air. Its density is practically non variable, ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... virtually impossible to tell the precise moment when the moon is at half, as the line it gives is not so sharp that we can fix it with absolute accuracy. There is, moreover, another element of error due to the refraction of light by the earth's atmosphere. The experiment was probably made when the sun was near the horizon, at which time, as we now know, but as Aristarchus probably did not suspect, the apparent displacement of the sun's position is ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... organ of vision, for instance, of the water salamander (the triton) or of the so-called axolotl, for it exists only in a kind of embryonic development, and contains neither a vitreous humor nor a lens for the refraction of the rays of light. As, however, the nerve of vision exists, it is possible that this salamander may be able to discern in some manner ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... disagreeable sensation produced by it returned. I determined to go home and place myself in the same position—as regards the mirror—and if the same effect was produced, I would make up my mind that it was the natural result of some principle of refraction or optics, which I did not understand, and dismiss it. I tried the experiment with the same result; and as I had said to myself, accounted for it on some principle unknown to me, and it then ceased to trouble me. But the God who works through the laws of nature, might surely give ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... artistic genius lies in the power of conceiving humanity in a new and striking way, of putting a happy world of its own creation in place of the meaner world of our common days, generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, according to [214] the choice of the imaginative intellect. In exercising this power, painting and poetry have a variety of subject almost unlimited. The range of characters or persons ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... he cried, and his cheeks flushed with annoyance. "Think of my wasting three cartridges in that fashion! If I had him at Bisley I'd shoot the turban off him, but this vibrating glare means refraction. What's the ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... visible at high water. On one occasion, when in a boat, we were so entangled by these shallows that we could hardly find our way. Nothing was visible but the flat beds of mud; the day was not very clear, and there was much refraction, or, as the sailors expressed it, "things loomed high." The only object within our view which was not level was the horizon; rushes looked like bushes unsupported in the air, and water like mudbanks, and mudbanks ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... logical ones of identity, similarity, or analogy. If you know a 'law,' you may discharge your memory of masses of particular instances, for the law will reproduce them for you whenever you require them. The law of refraction, for example: If you know that, you can with a pencil and a bit of paper immediately discern how a convex lens, a concave lens, or a prism, must severally alter the appearance of an object. But, if you don't know the general law, you must charge your memory separately ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... to go to bed. She had no nerves: she saw life in its proper colours without refraction. The dreadful scene at Wancote had made its full impression on her, but she was not beset like Hyde by visions of what might have been. Still she was tired and subdued, and when Verney had dressed her arm she announced her intention of spending ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... opened the way for the reform of physical science and for its immense modern advance. In his optical investigations he established the law of refraction of light. His ingenious theory of the vortices—tracing gravity, magnetism, light, and heat, to the whirling or revolving movements of the molecules of matter with which the universe is filled—was accepted as science for about ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... ornaments, and by caring for them and carefully watching their habits, boys and girls may learn their first lesson in natural history. If kept in a glass globe, nothing can be more interesting than to watch them, for, as Mr. White says, in Selborne, "The double refraction of the glass and water represents them, when moving, in a shifting and changeable variety of dimensions, shades, and colors, while the two mediums, assisted by the concavo-convex shape of the vessel, magnify and ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... existence of the systems, which have nothing psychic in themselves and which never become accessible to our psychic perception, corresponding to the lenses of the telescope which design the image. If we continue this comparison, we may say that the censor between two systems corresponds to the refraction of rays during their passage ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... from his neighbour's, and all more or less imperfect, it was impossible that the absolute objective truth of anything could be seen by any mortal, but only some partial approximation, and, as it were, sketch of it, according as the object was represented with more or less refraction on the mirror of his subjectivity. And therefore, as the true inquirer deals only with the possible, and lets the impossible go, it was the business of the wise man, shunning the search after absolute truth as an impious attempt of the Titans to scale Olympus, to busy himself ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... frequently, in England often, in Scotland rarely, is the blue sky. (Laughter) Lord Rayleigh's brilliant piece of mathematical work on the dynamics of blue sky is a monument to the application of mathematics to a subject of supreme difficulty, and on the subject of refraction of light he has pointed out the way towards finding all that has to be known, though he has ended his work by admitting that the explanation of the fundamentals of the reflection and refraction of light is still wanting and is a subject ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... fallen during the night and it proved in some measure a substitute for the want of water to our horses. It was also highly favourable to the object of our tour in affording a refraction when the sun rose, so that Coccaparra (Macquarie's range) appeared above the horizon and enabled me to determine our distance from it to be sixty miles. Still even this refractive state of the air brought no hills in view ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... it's a well-known scientific fact that the action of the solar rays, focussed by such a medium as I have suggested, will produce ignition—provided, of course, that the inflammable material is in the angle of refraction." ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... experimenting was sure to cost a man his reputation, and was likely to cost him his life, he insisted on experimenting, and braved all its risks. Few greater men have lived. As we follow Bacon's process of reasoning regarding the refraction of light, we see ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... world; all cautions regarding style arising out of so many [36] natural scruples as to the medium through which alone he can expose that inward sense of things, the purity of this medium, its laws or tricks of refraction: nothing is to be left there which might give conveyance to any matter save that. Style in all its varieties, reserved or opulent, terse, abundant, musical, stimulant, academic, so long as each is really characteristic or expressive, finds thus its justification, the sumptuous ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... the 31st of January the sun had reappeared in refraction, and was every day rising higher and higher above the horizon. But it was hid by the snow, which, if it did not produce utter ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... horrible death. They awoke and looked at each other, the very gaze of despair was appalling; far as the eye could reach, no object could be discerned; the bright haze of the morning added to the strong refraction of light; one smooth, interminable plain, one endless ocean, one cloudless sky and one burning sun, were all they had to gaze upon. The boat lay like the ark, in a world alone! They had no oar, no mast and no sail, nothing but the bare planks and themselves, without provisions ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... of two negresses bathing at Tobago. Behind them hung low tangles of cactus, melo-cactus and white-blossomed orchid; while on the tawny rocks glimmered snowy cotton splashed with a crimson turban; but the marvel of the work lay in the figures and the refraction of their brown limbs seen through crystal-clear water. The picture brought reputation to a man who cared nothing for it; and Barron's "Bathing Negresses" are only quoted here because they illustrate his method of work. He had painted from the sea in ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... hope to render it hastily. Look at it well, making out everything that you see, and distinguishing each component part of the effect. There will be, first, the stones seen through the water, distorted always by refraction, so that if the general structure of the stone shows straight parallel lines above the water, you may be sure they will be bent where they enter it; then the reflection of the part of the stone ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... reflection or refraction, the snows of Monte Sfiorito had become bright green, as if the light that fell on them had passed through emeralds. They both paused, to gaze and marvel for a little. Indeed, the prospect was a pleasing one, as well as a surprising—the ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... the refraction of the water was not allowed for, I cannot say, but there was no result. I only saw a quivering of the surface and the fish ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... and the child taken out of the illusory surroundings, it would be incapable of recognizing them until the matter had been properly explained. There are similar dangers of illusion to those who have developed spiritual sight, until they have been trained to discount the refraction and to view the life which is permanent and stable, disregarding the form which is evanescent and changeable. The danger of getting things out of focus always remains however and is so subtle that the writer feels an imperative duty to warn ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... of the dinghy. The schooner lay still in a pool of colourful water, the coral and weeds on the bottom in plain view, some of the swaying plants magnified by refraction. There was no air stirring, and from the far end of the island a morning haze was rising like smoke from flats which ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... several types of "law." The most frequent and useful type is that of the "elementary law,"—that of the composition of forces, that of gravitation, of refraction, and the like. Such laws declare no concrete facts to exist, and make no prophecy as to any actual future. They limit themselves to saying that if a certain character be found in any fact, another character will co-exist with it or follow ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... northern-most camp on April 8, which Nansen has given in his book as being in latitude 86 deg. 13.6' N. But Nansen tells me that Professor Geelmuyden, who had his astronomical results and his diary, reckoned that owing to refraction the horizon was lifted, and if so the observation had to be reduced accordingly. Nansen therefore gave the reduced latitude in his book, but he considers that his horizon was very clear when he took that observation, and believes that his latitude was higher than that given. He used ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... refraction shall be regulated in all equity and justice, by the magistrates of cities respectively, where it shall be judged that there is any room to complain in ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... and facetiousness arose out of the droll appearance of some individuals,—utility, and not beauty, was, however, generally voted the great essential in our bachelor community; and good looks, by general consent, put away for a future day. Great reflection, as well as refraction, existed for the time we remained beset in this position; and the refraction on one occasion enabled us to detect Captain Penny's brigs as well as the whalers, although they must have been ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... for some time in hesitancy to take a farewell of the rapturous vista. A hundred feet lower and the refraction of the light would present it in different coloring and perspective. With his spell of visual intoxication ran the consciousness of being utterly alone. But the egoism of his isolation in the towering infinite did not endure; for the sound of voices, a man's and a woman's, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... made to revolve by means of clockwork, were fed with mineral oil, a refined kerosine; and the refraction was caused by highly polished ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... glass, even ordinary optical glass, would not answer the purpose at all. The two disks, one of crown glass and the other of flint, must be not only of perfect transparency, but absolutely homogeneous through and through, to avoid inequality of refraction, and thus cause all rays passing through them to meet in the same focus. It was only about the beginning of the century that flint disks of more than two or three inches diameter could be made. Even after that, the art was supposed to be a ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... himself. "Good thing I've got my body shield modulated for full refraction," he told himself. "He'd be a little startled if he ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... gales—arid, bare, and without the slightest appearance of vegetable life. The inland prospect is shrouded over by a dense mirage, through which here and there are to be discovered the stems of a few distant palm-trees, so broken and disjoined by refraction that they present to the imagination anything but the idea of foliage or shade. The water in the bay is calm and smooth as the polished mirror; not the smallest ripple is to be heard on the beach, to break through the silence ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... "That is the very thing I want to tell you about. The sun, shining upon vapor and falling water, makes all these beautiful colors. That is the way I mix the rainbow. The science which teaches about the rays of light, their reflection and refraction, and the coloring they give to different objects, is called Optics: it is an interesting study, and I wish you to be a proficient in it." "Optics, is it? That seems to me very different from blowing soap-bubbles. I do hate to ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... the sea, when the atmosphere exhibits this peculiarity, though the practised eye of a mariner often detects vessels, which are hid from others, merely because they are not sought in the proper place. The deception may also be aided by a slight degree of refraction. ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... already mentioned as a product of its volcanoes, Iceland is famed for another mineral of great scientific value. It is that fine variety of carbonate of lime named Iceland-spar. Transparent and colourless, like glass, this mineral possesses the property of double refraction—any small object viewed through it in a particular direction appearing double. It is much used for optical purposes—especially ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... resided at Alexandria. He was skilled as a mathematician and geographer, and also excelled as a musician. His chief discovery was an irregularity of the lunar motion, called the 'evection.' He was also the first to observe the effect of the refraction of light in causing the apparent displacement of a heavenly body from its true position. Ptolemy devoted much of his time to extending and improving the theories of Hipparchus, and compiled a great treatise, ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... Plains. Before sunrise this morning I sent Wall up a tree to see if any hills or rising grounds would be visible by refraction. To the west, with a powerful telescope he can just see the top of rising ground. As the grass is now quite dry, the horses feel the want of water very much; many of them are looking wretched, and I hardly think will be able to reach it. ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... several times observed during a period of about 5 years. She developed into an unusually attractive young woman, showing at times various mild nervous disturbances as well as character difficulties. Only occasionally has she worn the glasses which corrected her errors of refraction. During this time she has not been severely ill. She has a palpable thyroid which has hardly increased in size. When last seen she was notable for a very clear skin, good color, and bright eyes. Conjunctival and corneal reflexes much ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... then was of a single piece, had not been properly shaped. Mathematicians had abundantly demonstrated that a single lens, if properly figured, must conduct all rays of light to the same focus, provided all rays experienced equal refraction in passing through the glass. Until Newton's discovery of the composition of white light, it had been taken for granted that the several rays in a white beam were equally refrangible. No doubt if this had been the case, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... them curiously at variance with our own. As an instance, we may state that the earth, as seen from a highflying balloon, used to be almost always described as appearing concave, or like a huge basin, and ingenious attempts were made to prove mathematically that this must be so. The laws of refraction are brought in to prove the fact; or, again, the case is stated thus: Supposing the extreme horizon to be seen when the balloon is little more than a mile high, the range of view on all sides will then be, roughly, some eighty miles. If, then, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... saw for the first time one of those sunsets which awaken in us Italians a feeling of wonder no less than that awakened in people from the North by the sunsets at Naples and Rome. The sun, because of the refraction of light by the mists which always fill the air in Holland, is greatly magnified, and diffuses through the clouds and on the sea a veiled and tremulous splendor like the reflection of a great fire. It seemed ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... imperfection of his instruments, his success was much less than that method was capable of affording. The bringing it into general use was reserved for Dr Maskelyne, our Astronomer Royal. See the preface to the Tables for correcting the Effects of Refraction and Parallax, published by the Board of Longitude, under the direction of Dr Shepherd, Flumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... disappear entirely in the Earth's cone of shadow; the solar rays are refracted round our globe by our atmosphere, and curving inward, illumine the lunar globe with a rosy tint that reminds one of the sunset. Sometimes, indeed, this refraction does not occur, owing doubtless to lack of transparency in the atmosphere, and the Moon becomes invisible. This happened recently, on April ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... centres. It would appear that in some cases the spasmodic jerkings are originated by certain movements habitually made by the patient in the course of his work. In others, as a result of astigmatism and other errors of refraction, the patient has acquired the habit of repeatedly tilting his head to enable him to see clearly, and these movements have become continuous ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... Uses of Experiment Early Scientific Notions Sciences of Observation Knowledge of the Ancients regarding Light Defects of the Eye Our Instruments Rectilineal Propagation of Light Law of Incidence and Reflection Sterility of the Middle Ages Refraction Discovery of Snell Partial and Total Reflection Velocity of Light Roemer, Bradley, Foucault, and Fizeau Principle of Least Action Descartes and the Rainbow Newton's Experiments on the Composition of Solar Light His ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... 21st of December, the shortest day, there is a note in my diary that I saw the sun's disk shining through the trees. Although fully half a degree of latitude north of the Arctic Circle, the refraction is sufficient to lift his whole sphere above the horizon. One speculates how much farther north it would be possible to see any part of the sun at noon on the shortest day; but north of here, throughout Alaska, is broken and mountainous country. We were on the northern ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... its length. The surfaces of this section, after having been carefully polished, are cemented together again by means of Canada balsam. A ray of light, on entering the prism, is separated by the double refraction of the calc-spar into an ordinary and an extraordinary ray; the former undergoes total reflection at the layer of balsam at an incidence which allows the extraordinary ray to be transmitted; the latter, therefore, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... forty-five degrees under it, toward the west; and in the very west the dark veil of night still lingering on the horizon. I think I have remarked this progression between the tropics, where there is scarcely any horizontal refraction to make the light prematurely encroach on the darkness, as ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... evening cloud impress'd, Bent in vast curve, the watery meteor shines Delightfully, to th' levell'd sun opposed: Lovely refraction ! while the vivid brede In listed colours glows, th' unconscious swain, With vacant eye, gazes on the divine Phenomenon, gleaming o'er the illumined fields, Or runs to catch the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... the diver sees the curious, strange beauty of the world around him, not as the bather sees it, blurred and indistinct, but in the calm splendor of its own thallassphere. The first thought is one of unspeakable admiration of the miraculous beauty of everything around him—a glory and a splendor of refraction, interference and reflection that puts to shame the Arabian story of the kingdom of the Blue Fish. Above him is that pure golden canopy with its rare glimmering lustrousness—something like the soft, dewy effulgence that comes with sun-breaks through ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... he suspected to pervade natural bodies, and lying concealed in them, to cause attraction and repulsion, the emission, reflection and refraction of light, electricity, calefaction, sensation, and muscular motion, is described by the Hindus as a fifth element, endowed with these very powers; and the Vedas abound with allusions to a force universally attractive, which they chiefly ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear
... the explanation is simple enough. Of the mirage the dictionary says it is "an optical illusion arising from an unequal refraction in the lower strata of the atmosphere, causing images of remote objects to be seen double, distorted or inverted as if reflected in a mirror, or to appear as if suspended in ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... fantastic prices, by Sir Walter Scott. His passion for land was really part of his passion for collecting antiquities. The theory of Fairyland here (as in many other Scottish legends and witch trials) is borrowed from the Pre-Christian Hades, and the Fairy Queen is a late refraction from Persephone. Not to eat, in the realm of the dead, is a regular precept of savage belief, all the world over. Mr. Robert Kirk's Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies may be consulted, or the Editor's ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... the Will, if stripped of unsuitable phraseology, are not very difficult questions. They are about as easy to comprehend as the air-pump, the law of refraction of light, or the atomic theory of chemistry. Distort them by inapposite metaphors, view them in perplexing attitudes, and you may make them more abstruse than the hardest proposition of the "Principia". What is far worse, ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... the survey of the moon was being completed; she appeared riddled with craters, and her essentially volcanic nature was affirmed by each observation. From the absence of refraction in the rays of the planets occulted by her it is concluded that she can have no atmosphere. This absence of air entails absence of water; it therefore became manifest that the Selenites, in order to live under such conditions, must have a special organisation, ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... and exhibitions, made models of each other, and rendered their walls hideous with bad likenesses of all their friends. Their conversation ceased to be intelligible to the uninitiated, and they prattled prettily of "chiaro oscuro, French sauce, refraction of the angle of the eye, seventh spinus process, depth and juiciness of color, tender touch, and a good tone." Even in dress the artistic disorder was visible; some cast aside crinoline altogether, and stalked about with a severe simplicity of outline worthy of ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... determining, the true meridian, but it is so intimately related to the determination of latitude and time, and these latter in turn upon the fixing of a true meridian, that the novice can find neither beginning nor end. When to these difficulties are added the corrections for parallax, refraction, instrumental errors, personal equation, and the determination of the probable error, he is hopelessly confused, and when he learns that time may be sidereal, mean solar, local, Greenwich, or Washington, and he is referred ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... his royal benefactor, saw also the publication of a volume of Tycho's great work "Introduction to the New Astronomy". The first volume, devoted to the new star of 1572, was not ready, because the reduction of the observations involved so much research to correct the star places for refraction, precession, etc.; it was not completed in fact until Tycho's death, but the second volume, dealing with the comet of 1577, was printed at Uraniborg and some copies were issued in 1588. Besides the comet observations it included an account of Tycho's system of the world. He would not accept ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... said Maurice, 'I do not think there is much use in talking to you, but I wish you to understand that all I said was, that the rainbow, or iris, is a natural phenomenon occasioned by the refraction of ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the water and see the stick straighten itself as fast as the water is lowered. Is not this more than enough to illustrate the fact and to find out the refraction? It is not then true that the eye deceives us, since by its aid alone we can correct the mistakes we ascribe ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... in the morning; the rays of the sun struck the surface of the waves at rather an oblique angle, and at the touch of their light, decomposed by refraction as through a prism, flowers, rocks, plants, shells, and polypi were shaded at the edges by the seven solar colours. It was marvellous, a feast for the eyes, this complication of coloured tints, a perfect kaleidoscope of green, yellow, orange, violet, indigo, and ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... Atmospheric refraction introduces another error by altering the apparent position of the sun; but the effect is too small to need consideration in the construction of an instrument which, with the best workmanship, does not after all admit of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... its present sense. The mineral had, however, long been known under the names calcareous spar and calc-spar, and the beautifully transparent variety called Iceland-spar had been much studied. The strong double refraction and perfect cleavages of Iceland-spar were described in detail by Erasmus Bartholinus in 1669 in his book Experimenta Crystalli Islandici disdiaclastici; the study of the same mineral led Christiaan Huygens to discover in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... with the red rays than happened with the crown-glass prism. Look at Fig. 112. The red rays passing through the flint glass are but little deflected, while the violet rays turn suddenly outwards. This is just what is wanted, for it counteracts the unequal inward refraction by B, and both sets of rays come to a focus in the same plane. Such a lens is called achromatic, or colourless. If you hold a common reading-glass some distance away from large print you will see that the letters are edged ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... 'ception of that bit of rough time getting into the French port, this 'ere's been a regular holiday, and—Oh my! There she goes, lads!" groaned the poor fellow, for the hull of the sloop had been gradually rising more and more into sight, rapidly at last from the refraction as she had glided into a hotter stratum of air while nearing the schooner, and all at once a white puff of smoke had darted out of her bows, to be followed by a dull heavy thud, when the men turned ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... electro-magnetic phenomenon; that is, that the waves which constitute light, and the waves produced by changing magnetism were identical in their nature, were in the same medium, travelled with the same velocity, were capable of refraction, and so on. Now that all this is a matter of common knowledge to-day, it is curious to look back no further than ten years. Maxwell's conclusions were adopted by scarcely a physicist in the world. Although it was known that inductive action ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... declination of the moon, and the inconstancy of the horizontal refractions, which are perpetually changing according to the state the atmosphere is in at the time. For the moon continues but for a short time in the equinoctial, and the refraction at a mean rate elevates her apparent place near the horizon, half as much ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... remark that as another result of the thinness of the Martian atmosphere twilight is much shorter than on the earth, the light being less diffused when the sun is below the horizon, and refraction also considerably ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... have been 21 deg. 51' 14"; but a meridian altitude observed to the north by lieutenant Flinders, gave 21 deg. 49' 54"; and I believe that altitudes from the sea horizon can never be depended on nearer than to one minute, on account of the variability of the horizontal refraction. From this cause it was that, when possible, we commonly observed the latitude on board the ship both to the north and south, taking the sun's altitude one way and his supplement the other, and the mean of the two results was considered to be true; separately, they often differed ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... the sun moved round the earth every day, and that on that particular occasion it stood still for a time, thus causing the light to remain longer; and I would say that they did not conjecture that, from the amount of snow in the air (see Josh. x. 11), the refraction may have been greater than usual, or that there may have been some other cause which we will not now ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... The "Ideas" of Plato are, in truth, neither more nor less than those universal definitions, those universal conceptions, as they look, as they could not but look, amid the peculiar lights and shadows, in the singularly constituted atmosphere, under the strange laws of refraction, and in the proper perspective, of Plato's house of thought. By its peculiarities, subsequent thought—philosophic, [164] poetic, theological—has been greatly influenced; by the intense subjectivities, the accidents, so to speak, of Plato's genius, of Plato himself; the ways constitutional ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... but the two regiments engaged in the flanking movement pushed on to gain the bluff. Just as they reached the crest of the ridge the moon rose from behind, enlarged by the refraction of the atmosphere, and as the attacking column passed along the summit it crossed the moon's disk and disclosed to us below a most interesting panorama, every figure nearly being thrown out in full relief. ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... appear'd, with open wings, The beauteous image, in fruition sweet Gladdening the thronged spirits. Each did seem A little ruby, whereon so intense The sun-beam glow'd that to mine eyes it came In clear refraction. And that, which next Befalls me to portray, voice hath not utter'd, Nor hath ink written, nor in fantasy Was e'er conceiv'd. For I beheld and heard The beak discourse; and, what intention form'd Of many, singly ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... prosecute his studies in that "sweet solitariness" which all true scholars prize, and without which few great attainments are made. The rumor of the invention excited in his mind the intensest interest. He sought for the explanation of the fact in the doctrine of refraction. He meditated day and night. At last he himself constructed an instrument,—a leaden organ pipe with two spectacle glasses, both plain on one side, while one of them had its opposite side convex, and the other its ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... vertical line in the sign of Taurus. The date was thus satisfactorily established, and a calculation of the longitude of the house was deduced with an accuracy which in those circumstances was certainly commendable. Nevertheless, as the facts and the theory of refraction were not thoroughly understood, nor Tycho Brahe's tables of refraction generally known, pilot Barendz could not be expected to be wiser than ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... perceived. Ars celare artem: art reveals life and conceals technique. We must understand something of technique and then forget it in appreciation. When we thrill to the splendor and glory of a sunset we are not thinking of the laws of refraction. Appreciation is ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... Satellites 5. Velocity of Light measured by Fizeau's Toothed Wheel 6. White Light resolved into Colors 7. Showing amount of Light received by Different Planets 8. Measuring Intensities of Lights 9. Reflection and Diffusion of Light 10. Manifold Reflections 11. Refraction by Water 12. Atmospherical Reflection 13. Refracting Telescope 14. Reflecting Telescope 15. The Cambridge Equatorial Refractor 16. The new Reflecting Telescope at Paris 17. Spectroscope, with Battery of Prisms 18. Spectra of Glowing Hydrogen and of the Sun 19. Illustrating Arcs and Angles ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... seeing matter yield itself with docility to our reasonings; but this matter, in all that it has that is intelligible, is our own work; of the reality "in itself" we know nothing and never shall know anything, since we only get its refraction through the forms of our faculty of perceiving. So that if we claim to affirm something of it, at once there rises the contrary affirmation, equally demonstrable, equally plausible. The ideality of ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... in their rear. Owing to their elevated location, the British, although using the rapid-fire breech-loading rifle invented by Ferguson himself, found their vision deflected, and continually fired high, thus suffering from nature's handicap, refraction. The militia, using sharpened butcher-knives which Ferguson had taught them to utilize as bayonets, charged against the mountaineers; but their fire, in answer to the deadly fusillade of the expert squirrel-shooters, was belated, owing ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... observation by Galileo. It was thus with the application of the isochronism of the pendulum to the making of instruments for measuring intervals, astronomical and other. It was thus when the discovery that the refraction and dispersion of light did not follow the same law of variation, affected both astronomy and physiology by giving us achromatic telescopes and microscopes. It was thus when Bradley's discovery of the aberration of light enabled him to make the first step towards ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... intense cold. The distant blue belt of timber along the Gizhiga River wavered and trembled in its outlines as if seen through currents of heated air, and the white ghost-like mountains thirty miles away to the southward were thrown up and distorted by refraction into a thousand airy, fantastic shapes which melted imperceptibly one into another, like a series of dissolving views. Every feature of the scenery was strange, weird, arctic. The red sun rolled slowly along the southern horizon, until ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... of the rainbow? It is evident that what apparent things we see come to our eyes in right or in crooked lines, or by refraction: these are incorporeal and to sense obscure, but to reason they are obvious. Those which are seen in right lines are those which we see through the air or horn or transparent stones, for all the parts of these things are very fine and tenuous; ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Woolridge. It is the mirage, from the Latin miror, to wonder, which appears to be what you are doing just now. The steamer you see sailing along the shore is an optical illusion, a reflection, and not a reality. Refraction, which is the bending of the rays of light, produces this effect. If you look at a straight stick set up in the water, it will appear to be bent, and this is caused by refraction. The learned gentlemen present will excuse me for going back to ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... knew enough of the laws of heat and refraction to realize they must have an even temperature, but they forgot ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... God's agency is declared and His ownership asserted. 'I do set My bow.' Neither Noah nor the writer knew anything about refraction or the prismatic spectrum. But perhaps they knew more about the rainbow than people do who know all about how it comes, except that God sets it in the cloud, and that it is His. Let us have the facts which science labels as such, by all means, and the more the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... and down the dingy room. "Look here, laddie! There's a great continent from the equator to the icebergs, and not a man in it who could correct an astigmatism. What do they know of modern eye-surgery and refraction? Why, dammy, they don't know much about it in the provinces of England yet, let alone Brazil. Man, if you could only see it, there's a fringe of squinting millionaires sitting ten deep round the whole continent with their money in their hands waiting for an oculist. Eh, Munro, what? ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... in a certain dim, confused way, even these superficial observers had got hold of the right notion of what it was that did bind these people together. They called them 'Christians' —Christ's men, Christ's followers. But it was only a very dim refraction of the truth that had got to them; they had no notion that 'Christ' was not a proper name, but the designation of an office; and they had no notion that there was anything peculiar or strange in the bond which united its adherents to Christ. Hence they called His followers ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... not with the inconsistency of the objectors to John and Jesus, but simply with this caricature which He quotes from them of some of His characteristics. It is a distorted refraction of the beam of light that comes from His face, through the muddy, thick medium of their prejudice. And if we can, I was going to say, pull it straight again, we shall see something of His glories. I take the two clauses of my text separately because ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... great eyes like burning flames, but a second look dispelled the illusion. The red sunlight was shining on the windows of St. Mary's Church behind our seat, and as the sun dipped there was just sufficient change in the refraction and reflection to make it appear as if the light moved. I called Lucy's attention to the peculiar effect, and she became herself with a start, but she looked sad all the same. It may have been that she was thinking of that terrible night up there. We never refer ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... our design to enter into an elaborate description of this piece of mechanism, as every student of philosophy, who is well acquainted with the reflection and refraction of rays of light, will understand how an ingenious contrivance produced the results spoken of. The same principle enters into the arrangement of the camera obscura. There was an aperture very artfully cut through the wall, and so guarded on the ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... nothing more or less than disassociated states of mind and need not in reality be any more serious than errors of refraction of vision, faulty locomotion or lack of coordination. It comes because individuals know nothing of the psychology of themselves or their own minds and is the result of over-intensified mental and physical ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... of data which he had derived from the study of the photograph as from plumb line, level, compass, and tape, astronomical triangle, vertices, zenith, pole, and sun, declination, azimuth, solar time, parallactic angles, refraction, and a dozen ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... find in Mathematics Partial Differential Equations, Tides, Sound, Calculus of Variations, Composition of rotary motions, Motion in resisting medium, Lhuillier's theorem, Brightness of an object as seen through a medium with any possible law of refraction (a good investigation), star-reductions, numerical calculations connected with them, equilibrium of chain under centripetal force (geometrically treated, as an improvement upon Whewell's algebraical method), ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... the sun's disc, enlarged by refraction, was dipping blood-red below the horizon. The distant waves glittered in the west, and sparkled like sheets of liquid silver. Nothing was to be seen in that direction but sky and water, except one sharply-defined object, the hull of the MACQUARIE ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... well as of refraction have been enlisted into the service of the astronomical observer. The formation of an image by means of a concave mirror is exhibited in fig. 3. As the observer's head would be placed between the object and the mirror, if the image, formed ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... water in the distance, and hastened on to them; and then they fancied they were close to rivers and islands, covered with luxuriant foliage, but still were doomed to disappointment; as all was the result of the highly-rarefied air, and the refraction of the sun's rays on the sultry plain. What would they have given for a bush even to afford them any shelter from the noonday sun, for the crowns of their heads appeared as if covered with live coal, and their minds began to wander. The poor horses moved at ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... variously deflected from their normal course, so that on emerging we have each of these coloured rays travelling in its own direction, vibrating in its own plane. It is well to remember that the bending off, or deflection, or refraction, is towards the thick end of the prism always, and that those of the coloured rays in that analysed band, the spectrum, most bent away from the original line of direction of the white light striking the prism, are said to ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... they really are below it. So that the Sun and Moon have both been seen above the Horizon, whil'st the Moon has been in an Eclipse. I shall not here instance in the great refractions, that the tops of high mountains, seen at a distance, have been found to have; all which seem to argue the Horizontal refraction, much greater then it is ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... known of Thomas Hariot; his only published works are the 'Briefe and true report' (PG4247) and the posthumous 'Praxis', a handbook of algebra. He anticipated the law of refraction, corresponded with Kepler, observed comets, and may have been the first to recognize that the straight line paths of comets might be segments of elongated ellipses. The lost 'ephemera' referred to in the text have since been found (since 1876) and a conference ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... sand, which has come inward from the sea, and prevents the mud's escape—banks parted by narrow gullies, the delight of the gunner with his punt, haunted by million wild-fowl in winter, and in summer hazy steaming flats, beyond which the trees of Lincolnshire loom up, raised by refraction far above the horizon, while the masts and sails of distant vessels quiver, fantastically distorted and lengthened, sometimes even inverted, by a refraction like that which plays such tricks with ships and coasts in the Arctic seas. Along the top of the mud banks lounge the long ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... that the whole fabric is warped and bent at a thousand angles,—it is not only the quality of the ancient glass, nor its colour, that gives this unattainable expression to these windows, but the accidental warping and wear of centuries have laid each bit of glass at a different angle, so that the refraction of the light is quite different from any possible reflection on the smooth surface of ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... was due to an actual astral disturbance, or to light-signalling to the earth or other planet, it would be difficult—in fact, impossible—to ascertain with the means I had at my command. Perhaps it was only an optical illusion caused by refraction and deflected rays of vision, owing to the effect upon the atmosphere of the heated rocky mass by our side and under us—such as is the case in effects of mirage. I am not prepared to express an opinion, and only state what my men and I saw, merely ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the crystalline lens becomes opaque and loses its transparency, the power of refraction is lost—the animal ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... being cleft in the middle by the force of the waves, displayed the phenomenon of a waterfall, the water rushing into the sea from the height of thirty feet. If the sun had pierced the vapoury veil which concealed it from our view, the refraction of his rays would have given to the ice the many-coloured tints of the rainbow. We took care to keep a good look out; but the fog was thick. We fell in with many other icebergs; but ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... movement of the sea-water, and its design is to represent the fishes and marine animals as nearly as possible in their native haunts and habits, to do which, and not startle the fish, the visitors go through darkened passages, and are thus concealed from them, all the light coming in by refraction through the water. Their actions are thus natural, and they move about with perfect freedom, some of the tanks being of enormous size. Here swim schools of herring, mackerel, and porpoises as they do out at sea, the octopus gyrates his arms, and almost every ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... and the curves calculated from the index of refraction, as obtained by any of the ordinary methods applicable to plates (the microscope method, in general, is quite good enough), squares circumscribing the desired circles are cut out by the help of a diamond. [Footnote: Glazebrook and Shaw's Practical Physics, p. 383 (4th ed.).] The squares ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... heavens and earth seemed to give a full denial to sin and sorrow. The sun was just mounting over the horizon, looking up the clear cloud-mottled sky. From millions of water-drops hanging on the bending stalks of grass, sparkled his rays in varied refraction, transformed here to a gorgeous burning ruby, there to an emerald, green as the grass, and yonder to a flashing, sunny topaz. The chanting priest-lark had gone up from the low earth, as soon as the heavenly ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... arranged so as to cause a series of eight lenses one foot in diameter and three feet focal distance to revolve with any velocity up to sixty revolutions per minute round a central lamp. The light from this lamp being concentrated by refraction through the eight lenses into eight pencils, having a divergence of about eight degrees each, illuminated when at rest not quite fifty degrees of the horizon; but when this system of lenses was put into rapid motion, every degree of the three hundred and sixty degrees ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... it, pollute it at your pleasure and at your peril; for on the peace of those weak waves must all the heaven you shall ever gain be first seen; and through such purity as you can win for those dark waves must all the light of the risen Sun of Righteousness be bent down by faint refraction. Cleanse them, and calm them, as you love your life. Therefore it is that all the power of nature depends on subjection to the human soul. Man is the Sun of the world; more than the real sun. The fire of his wonderful heart is the only light ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... basin. From side to side of its narrow depths she sped rapidly, the blue-white of the spring water showing her lithe limbs in perfect grace of motion made mystically indefinite and shimmering by refraction through the little rippling waves her progress raised. She raced and strained, from the pure love of effort, as if a stake of magnitude ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... is next described; this is done well and evidently at first hand, though the functions of the parts are not given with complete accuracy. Many other points of physiological optics are touched on, in general erroneously. Bacon then discusses vision in a right line, the laws of reflection and refraction, and the construction of mirrors and lenses. In this part of the work, as in the preceding, his reasoning depends essentially upon his peculiar view of natural agents and their activities. His fundamental physical maxims are matter and force; the latter ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... will often mistake a tuft of grass, or a tree, or other most dissimilar object, for his companion, or his horse, or game. An old traveller is rarely deceived by mirage. If he doubts, he can in many cases adopt the following hint given by Dr. Kane: "Refraction will baffle a novice, on the ice; but we have learned to baffle refraction. By sighting the suspected object with your rifle at rest, you ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... proceeded to accomplish our quest on foot. There were three baths in all, natural basins of rock fed by streams of mountain water, and shaded by the dense foliage of lofty trees. One of them is circular in form, and the water is curiously coloured, by some trick of reflection or refraction, to a dull steely blue. A plunge in the clear cool water was well worth the trifling fee we paid to the celestial, and we returned to our hotel with a famous appetite ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... his first book in 1597. In 1599 was invited by Tycho to Prague, and there appointed Imperial mathematician, at a handsome but seldom paid salary. Observed the new star of 1604. Endeavoured to find the law of refraction of light from Vitellio's measurements, but failed. Analyzed Tycho's observations to find the true law of motion of Mars. After incredible labour, through innumerable wrong guesses, and six years of almost incessant calculation, he at length emerged in ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge |
