Abstract
Is your correspondent “V. P.” (NATURE, June 3, p. 398) perfectly sure that there is not in the glass pane in question one of those flattened oval air bubbles so common in window glass, which he may have overlooked? The phenomenon of the dark disc of shadow with the bright edge so exactly corresponds with the effect produced by these common flaws in glass that, in spite of his assurances, I cannot help suspecting that he may have misjudged the angle of incidence of the sun's rays. A window is before me as I write which presents identically the same phenomenon, and I was nearly being misled until, with a pencil point laid on the pane, I tracked the shadow to its source, which was much higher up on the window than I should have judged.
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BENHAM, C. An Optical Phenomenon. Nature 80, 458 (1909). https://doi.org/10.1038/080458a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/080458a0
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