Light visible and invisible : a series of lectures delivered at the Royal institution of Great Britain, at Christmas, 1896, with additional lectures / by Silvanus P. Thompson.

  • Thompson, Silvanus P. (Silvanus Phillips), 1851-1916.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Light visible and invisible : a series of lectures delivered at the Royal institution of Great Britain, at Christmas, 1896, with additional lectures / by Silvanus P. Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    mentally wrong. For the sake of students and teachers of optics he has added to Lecture I. an Appendix, in which the newer ideas are further developed. Other Appendices have been added to the later Lectures, with the aim of filling up some of the gaps left in the subjects as treated in the lecture theatre. Now that the electromagnetic nature of all light- waves has been fully demonstrated, no apology is needed for bringing into the fifth Lecture a few of the experi- mental points upon which that demonstration rests. That these fundamental points can be given without any great complication of either thought or language is in itself the strongest argument for making that demonstration an essential feature at an early stage in the teaching of the science. Many of the ideas which must be grasped, for example that of the polarisation of light, are popularly supposed to be extremely difficult; whereas the difficulty lies not in the ideas themselves so much as in the language in which they are generally set forth. In an experience lasting over a good many years, the author has found that the main points in the phenomena of polarisation are quite easily grasped by persons of ordinary intelligence—even by children—provided they are presented in a modern way devoid of pedantic