Abstract
THESE lectures consist in a series delivered in the winter of 1904–5 in Hamburg to a popular audience. The theme of the lectures is the development of the wave-theory, culminating in the special form of this theory which postulates the essential identity of luminous and electromagnetic waves. The lectures were illustrated experimentally, and a special feature in connection with them is the care taken in devising experiments of a simple and attractive kind. Although they were delivered to a lay public, it must not be supposed that they are popular in the bad sense. They are infused throughout with the scientific spirit; there is no sacrifice of accuracy on the altar of simplicity. The subject is dealt with in a way which must have proved very welcome to the non-professional listener who had some very elementary knowledge of it and desired to have the fundamental experimental facts brought before him in a consecutive way. Geometric propagation, dispersion of colour, interference and diffraction phenomena, double refraction and polarisation, electric oscillations and their quasi-optical properties, the explanation of the demonstrated relations between electrical conductivity and the optical properties of metals—these, in brief outline, are some of the chief phenomena which are expounded. Each experiment is described with the help of a diagram.
Zwölf Vorlesungen über die Natur des Lichtes.
By Dr. J. Classen. Pp. x + 249; diagrams. (Leipzig: G. J. Göschen, 1905.) Price 4 marks.
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Zwölf Vorlesungen über die Natur des Lichtes . Nature 73, 606 (1906). https://doi.org/10.1038/073606c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/073606c0