[Treatise on Light by Christiaan Huygens]@TWC D-Link book
Treatise on Light

CHAPTER V
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Then as CK is to CG so is CG to CD.

And because DI is parallel to CM, the conjugate diameter to CG, it follows that KI touches the Ellipse at I; which remained to be shown.
32.

One sees then that as there is in the refraction of ordinary media a certain constant proportion between the sines of the angles which the incident ray and the refracted ray make with the perpendicular, so here there is such a proportion between CV and CD or IE; that is to say between the Sine of the angle which the incident ray makes with the perpendicular, and the horizontal intercept, in the Ellipse, between the refraction of this ray and the diameter CM.

For the ratio of CV to CD is, as has been said, the same as that of N to the semi-diameter CG.
33.

I will add here, before passing away, that in comparing together the regular and irregular refraction of this crystal, there is this remarkable fact, that if ABPS be the spheroid by which light spreads in the Crystal in a certain space of time (which spreading, as has been said, serves for the irregular refraction), then the inscribed sphere BVST is the extension in the same space of time of the light which serves for the regular refraction.
[Illustration] For we have stated before this, that the line N being the radius of a spherical wave of light in air, while in the crystal it spread through the spheroid ABPS, the ratio of N to CS will be 156,962 to 93,410.


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