[Treatise on Light by Christiaan Huygens]@TWC D-Link bookTreatise on Light CHAPTER V 35/53
If one takes a straight line AB for the thickness of the crystal, its point B being at the bottom, and if one divides it at the points C, D, E, according to the proportions of the elevations found, making AE 3/5 of AB, AB to AC as 99,324 to 70,283, and AB to AD as 99,324 to 62,163, these points will divide AB as in this figure.
And it will be found that this agrees perfectly with experiment; that is to say by placing the eyes above in the plane which cuts the crystal according to the shorter diameter of the rhombus, the regular refraction will lift up the letters to E; and one will see the bottom, and the letters over which it is placed, lifted up to D by the irregular refraction. But by placing the eyes above in the plane which cuts the crystal according to the longer diameter of the rhombus, the regular refraction will lift the letters to E as before; but the irregular refraction will make them, at the same time, appear lifted up only to C; and in such a way that the interval CE will be quadruple the interval ED, which one previously saw. 43.
I have only to make the remark here that in both the positions of the eyes the images caused by the irregular refraction do not appear directly below those which proceed from the regular refraction, but they are separated from them by being more distant from the equilateral solid angle of the Crystal.
That follows, indeed, from all that has been hitherto demonstrated about the irregular refraction; and it is particularly shown by these last demonstrations, from which one sees that the point I appears by irregular refraction at S in the perpendicular line DP, in which line also the image of the point P ought to appear by regular refraction, but not the image of the point I, which will be almost directly above the same point, and higher than S. But as to the apparent elevation of the point I in other positions of the eyes above the crystal, besides the two positions which we have just examined, the image of that point by the irregular refraction will always appear between the two heights of D and C, passing from one to the other as one turns one's self around about the immovable crystal, while looking down from above.
And all this is still found conformable to our hypothesis, as any one can assure himself after I shall have shown here the way of finding the irregular refractions which appear in all other sections of the crystal, besides the two which we have considered.
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