"Refraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seemed to give a full denial to sin and sorrow. The sun was just mounting over the horizon, looking up the clear cloud-mottled sky. From millions of water-drops hanging on the bending stalks of grass, sparkled his rays in varied refraction, transformed here to a gorgeous burning ruby, there to an emerald, green as the grass, and yonder to a flashing, sunny topaz. The chanting priest-lark had gone up from the low earth, as soon as the heavenly light had begun to enwrap and illumine the ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... next morning the sun was pouring in between her curtains of old brocade, and its refraction from the ripples of the Canal was drawing a network of golden scales across the vaulted ceiling. The maid had just placed a tray on a slim marquetry table near the bed, and over the edge of the tray Susy discovered the small serious face of Clarissa Vanderlyn. At the sight of the little girl ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... Walpole till he went out to the wood-house to saw and split wood. Presently I saw, hastening up the avenue, Mr. George Bradford. He stayed to tea. His beautiful character makes him perennial in interest. As my husband says, we can see nature through him straight, without refraction. My water this morning was deadly cold instead of livingly cold, and I knew the Imp must have taken it from some already drawn, instead of right from the well. The maid brought for me from Mrs. Emerson's "The Mysteries of Paris," which I read all ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... by an intimate acquaintance with the very matters defined. It would be tedious to enumerate the countless absurd explanations given in elementary text-books of the phenomena of interference, polarization, and double refraction,—explanations as enigmatical as the inscriptions at Memphis and Karnak,—explanations useless to the optician because needless, and to the student because obscure. It would seem that subjects so simple and beautiful as these could not be rendered difficult of comprehension, except by the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... his plenary sense of what he really has to say, his sense of the world; all cautions regarding style arising out of so many [36] natural scruples as to the medium through which alone he can expose that inward sense of things, the purity of this medium, its laws or tricks of refraction: nothing is to be left there which might give conveyance to any matter save that. Style in all its varieties, reserved or opulent, terse, abundant, musical, stimulant, academic, so long as each is really characteristic or expressive, finds thus its justification, the sumptuous ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... red rays than happened with the crown-glass prism. Look at Fig. 112. The red rays passing through the flint glass are but little deflected, while the violet rays turn suddenly outwards. This is just what is wanted, for it counteracts the unequal inward refraction by B, and both sets of rays come to a focus in the same plane. Such a lens is called achromatic, or colourless. If you hold a common reading-glass some distance away from large print you will see that the letters are edged with coloured bands, proving that the lens is not achromatic. ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... later every commander has to deal with some refraction of this kind of problem. When it comes, moralizing and generalizing about the weakness of human nature does no good whatever. To call the man a fool is as invidious as to waste indignation upon the cause of his misfortune. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... transforms plumbago or some other form of carbon into the condition of a diamond cannot be stated. Diamond is the purest form of carbon found in nature. It is a beautiful object, alike from the results of its powers of refraction, as also from the form into which its carbon has been crystallised. How Nature, in her wonderful laboratory, has precipitated the diamond, with its wonderful powers of spectrum analysis, we cannot say with certainty. Certain chemists have, at a great expense, produced ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... friend, E. W. Cooke, long a resident in Holland, and a keen and observing artist, remarked that the skies in the pictures of Backhuysen, though dark and inky, were precisely what we see now—the deep Zuyder Sea swallowing up any refraction of light which would otherwise have illuminated the clouds; while the skies of Cuyp, receiving the coruscations arising from the meeting of the two rivers, the Meuse and the Waal, the scenes of most of his pictures, exhibit that luminous reflection and unsteady appearance peculiar to his works. ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... rapidly of data which he had derived from the study of the photograph as from plumb line, level, compass, and tape, astronomical triangle, vertices, zenith, pole, and sun, declination, azimuth, solar time, parallactic angles, refraction, and ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... surface. The idea of creating light not only involves the Divine Conception of the thing, and the marvellous method of its production,[1] but doubtless, also, all those wonderful laws of reflection, refraction, polarization, and a thousand others, which the science ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... us that the white light of the sun is composed of the seven colors of the spectrum in combination, which colors may be readily separated by the refraction of the prism. All objects possess, in a greater or less degree, the power of decomposing light and absorbing colors. Now a ray of sunlight falling upon any given object is in a measure decomposed, a portion of its integral colors is absorbed, and the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... place I thought "Highland-looking." Over the hill from Kirkoswald a farm-road leads to the coast. As I came down above Turnberry, the sea view was indeed strangely different from the day before. The cold fogs were all blown away; and there was Ailsa Craig, like a refraction, magnified and deformed, of the Bass Rock; and there were the chiselled mountain tops of Arran, veined and tipped with snow; and behind, and fainter, the low, blue land of Cantyre. Cottony clouds stood, in a great castle, over the top of Arran, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and each by its growth forms a single colony which can be further tested. It is self-evident that all culture material must be sterilized by heat before using, and in the manipulations care must be exercised to avoid contamination from the air. The refraction index of the bacterial cell is so slight that the microscopic study is facilitated or made possible by staining them with various aniline dyes. Owing to differences in the cell material the different species of bacteria ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... Ratty, my love, you must study. I will give you the renowned Kirwan's book. Charlotte tore some of it for curl papers; but there's enough left to enlighten you with the sun's rays, and reflection and refraction—" ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... their own exertions from the jaws of a horrible death. They awoke and looked at each other, the very gaze of despair was appalling; far as the eye could reach, no object could be discerned; the bright haze of the morning added to the strong refraction of light; one smooth, interminable plain, one endless ocean, one cloudless sky and one burning sun, were all they had to gaze upon. The boat lay like the ark, in a world alone! They had no oar, no mast and ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... In its place was a tenuous refraction that told where it had been. That and a thin layer of perfectly reflective copper ... colorless now, but Manning knew it was copper, for it represented the continuation of the ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... there followed gentle feelings, and gentler yet in her attendance on her patron's obsequies, in the discovery that all of which he died possessed he'd left to her, but it is the duller surfaces that are slowest to give refraction, the least used springs that are least pliant. She was come a long road from her first signs of hardening. She was past, now, the stage where, when grieving for the little old man, she would have felt contrition that her first thought at his ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... represent the fishes and marine animals as nearly as possible in their native haunts and habits, to do which, and not startle the fish, the visitors go through darkened passages, and are thus concealed from them, all the light coming in by refraction through the water. Their actions are thus natural, and they move about with perfect freedom, some of the tanks being of enormous size. Here swim schools of herring, mackerel, and porpoises as they do out at sea, the octopus gyrates his arms, and almost every fish that is known ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... opened the way for the reform of physical science and for its immense modern advance. In his optical investigations he established the law of refraction of light. His ingenious theory of the vortices—tracing gravity, magnetism, light, and heat, to the whirling or revolving movements of the molecules of matter with which the universe is filled—was accepted as science for about ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... rather curious about these pools. Our guide saw us measuring the depth of one of them, which was full of greenish-blue water, colored only by the refraction of the light. He took our long alpenstock, and poising it, sent it down into the water, as a man might throw a javelin. It disappeared, but in a few seconds leaped up at us out of the water, as if thrown back ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... entirely different. As we ascend the air becomes rarer. It has less moisture, because a wet atmosphere, being heavier, lies nearer the surface of the earth. Being rarer the action of sunlight on the particles is less intense. Reflection and refraction of the rays acting on the light atmosphere do not produce such a powerful effect as on the air ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... short; since the 31st of January the sun had reappeared in refraction, and was every day rising higher and higher above the horizon. But it was hid by the snow, which, if it did not produce utter darkness, rendered ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... It is the mirage, from the Latin miror, to wonder, which appears to be what you are doing just now. The steamer you see sailing along the shore is an optical illusion, a reflection, and not a reality. Refraction, which is the bending of the rays of light, produces this effect. If you look at a straight stick set up in the water, it will appear to be bent, and this is caused by refraction. The learned gentlemen present will excuse me for going back ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... the prairie fires at night. The grass is burnt in spring and autumn so as to kill off the old tufts and allow of the new shoots growing for hay. The fires look like one long streak of quivering flame, the forked tips of which flash and quiver in the horizon, magnified by refraction, and on a dark night are lovely. In the day-time one only sees volumes of smoke which break the monotony of the landscape, though I don't know that it is picturesque. With a slight breeze the fires spread in a marvellous way, even at the rate of eight or ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... or polished stone, one or more of the following effects are observed:—it may be transmitted through the stone, diaphaneity, as it is called; it may produce single or double refraction, or polarisation; if reflected, it may produce lustre or colour; or it may produce phosphorescence; so that light may be (1) transmitted; (2) reflected; or produce ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... Velocity of Light measured by Fizeau's Toothed Wheel 6. White Light resolved into Colors 7. Showing amount of Light received by Different Planets 8. Measuring Intensities of Lights 9. Reflection and Diffusion of Light 10. Manifold Reflections 11. Refraction by Water 12. Atmospherical Reflection 13. Refracting Telescope 14. Reflecting Telescope 15. The Cambridge Equatorial Refractor 16. The new Reflecting Telescope at Paris 17. Spectroscope, with Battery of Prisms 18. Spectra of Glowing Hydrogen and of the Sun 19. Illustrating Arcs and ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... is evident that matter set in motion by the sun has the power of producing heat without light, and that its rays are less refrangible than the visible rays. The invisible rays that produce heat are capable of reflection as well as refraction in the same ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... disposed to regard the prophetic and oracular Apollo (who, as the Hymn to Hermes tells us, alone knows the will of Father Zeus) as the Greek modification of this personage in savage theology. Where this Son is found in Australia, I by no means regard him as a savage refraction from Christian teaching about a mediator, for Christian teaching, in fact, has not been accepted, least of all by the highly conservative sorcerers, or shamans, or wirreenuns of the tribes. European observers, of course, have been ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... of Pennsylvania; Professor of Optics and Refraction; formerly Physician in Philadelphia Hospital; Member of Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania State and ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... was standing at the side of a mirror where the laws of incidence and refraction would unfortunately not permit her ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... this very storm. Next day came another of the sea wonders. The cry of land started them all from the dinner table; but the land happened to be an immense field of ice, which, with the inequalities of its surface and the effect of refraction, presented some appearance of a wooded country. On that night the cry of "Light a-head," while they were still several hundred miles from land, excited new astonishment. "All the knowing ones" clearly distinguished a magnificent revolver. The paddles were accordingly stopped to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... a curious sensation of having stepped into an old Flemish painting. The hall in which he stood was cool and rather dark, though a bright refraction of light tossed from some upper window upon a tall mirror filled the shadow with broken spangles. Through an open doorway at the rear was the green glimmer of a garden. In front of him was a mahogany sideboard. On its polished top lay two books, a box of cigars, and a cut glass ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... is not with the inconsistency of the objectors to John and Jesus, but simply with this caricature which He quotes from them of some of His characteristics. It is a distorted refraction of the beam of light that comes from His face, through the muddy, thick medium of their prejudice. And if we can, I was going to say, pull it straight again, we shall see something of His glories. I take the two clauses of my text separately because they are closely connected with our design, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to an actual astral disturbance, or to light-signalling to the earth or other planet, it would be difficult—in fact, impossible—to ascertain with the means I had at my command. Perhaps it was only an optical illusion caused by refraction and deflected rays of vision, owing to the effect upon the atmosphere of the heated rocky mass by our side and under us—such as is the case in effects of mirage. I am not prepared to express an opinion, and only state ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... were as simple as the alphabet to Uncle Robin. He would explain it as a sight reflected on the cloud and thrown on a sea of mist or a desert as on a screen, using difficult words, like "refraction," and words from Euclid, like "angles." But Uncle Alan would object, Uncle Alan mistrusting difficult words and words from Euclid. Alan would raise his head from splicing a fishing-rod or cleaning the lock of a gun ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... treated by his contemporaries. [28] Another.—Epicurus, founder of the Epicurean philosophy. He lived B. C. about 300 years. [29] Water crooks a stick.—An allusion to the bent appearance which a stick has in water, consequent upon the refraction of light. [30] The wars.—This fable appears to have been composed about the beginning of the year 1677. The European powers then found themselves exhausted by wars, and desirous of peace. England, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... day to every man. Lichens, stunted grass, saxifrage, and a feeble willow, are the plants of Melville Island, but in sheltered nooks there are found sorrel, poppy, and a yellow buttercup. Halos and double suns are very common consequences of refraction in this quarter of the world. Franklin returned from his first and most famous voyage with his men all safe and sound, except the loss of a few fingers, frost-bitten. We sail back only as far as Regent's Inlet, being ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... before my visit to this place, but he found so much to interest him in the cave while it was lighted a little by the borrowed gleam from the water, that he lingered there until, the sun moving on his course, the angle of refraction suddenly changed. The child had not the courage to take a plunge into the dark gulf, where there was no beacon to guide him, and where he might have struck against the rock. He therefore remained the rest of the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... crystalline lens becomes opaque and loses its transparency, the power of refraction is lost—the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... the same distance from noon. Some may ascribe this to the greater height of the atmosphere in the evenings having been rarefied by the sun during the day; but as its density must at the same time be diminished, its power of refraction would continue the same. I should rather suppose that it may be owing to the phosphorescent quality (as it is called) of almost all bodies; that is, when they have been exposed to the sun they continue to emit light for a considerable time afterwards. This is generally believed to arise ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... Do not be frightened at the complexity; but, on the other hand, do not hope to render it hastily. Look at it well, making out everything that you see, and distinguishing each component part of the effect. There will be, first, the stones seen through the water, distorted always by refraction, so that, if the general structure of the stone shows straight parallel lines above the water, you may be sure they will be bent where they enter it; then the reflection of the part of the stone above the water ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... effect of refraction," said Zulma, in a low voice and with a sneer. "But to me they seem like giants, towering on the heights and stretching ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... medium, through which posterity is obliged to look at his contemporaries,—a medium which so refracts and distorts their images, that it is almost out of the question to see them correctly. There is no rule, as in astronomy, by which this refraction may ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... times observed during a period of about 5 years. She developed into an unusually attractive young woman, showing at times various mild nervous disturbances as well as character difficulties. Only occasionally has she worn the glasses which corrected her errors of refraction. During this time she has not been severely ill. She has a palpable thyroid which has hardly increased in size. When last seen she was notable for a very clear skin, good color, and bright eyes. Conjunctival and corneal reflexes ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... subtle spirit which he suspected to pervade natural bodies, and lying concealed in them, to cause attraction and repulsion, the emission, reflection and refraction of light, electricity, calefaction, sensation, and muscular motion, is described by the Hindus as a fifth element, endowed with these very powers; and the Vedas abound with allusions to a force universally attractive, ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear
... prisms of different varieties of tabasheer, Brewster proceeded to determine its refractive index, arriving at the remarkable result that tabasheer "has a lower index of refraction than any other known solid or liquid, and that it actually holds an intermediate place between water and gaseous bodies!" This excessively low refractive power Brewster believes to afford a complete explanation of the extraordinary behavior exhibited by tabasheer when ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I found it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying apparition. It seemed, however, to be a man standing upright in a sort of flat-bottomed boat, steering with a long oar, and being carried down the opposite ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... a product of its volcanoes, Iceland is famed for another mineral of great scientific value. It is that fine variety of carbonate of lime named Iceland-spar. Transparent and colourless, like glass, this mineral possesses the property of double refraction—any small object viewed through it in a particular direction appearing double. It is much used for optical purposes—especially ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... musical execution. Similarly the Adagio, developed, as Beethoven has developed it in the third movement of his Ninth Symphony, may be taken as the basis of all regulations as to musical time. In a certain delicate sense the Allegro may be regarded as the final result of a refraction (Brechung) of the pure Adagio-character by the more restless moving figuration. On careful examination of the principal motives of the Allegro it will be found that the melody (Gesang) derived from the Adagio, predominates. ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... gales—arid, bare, and without the slightest appearance of vegetable life. The inland prospect is shrouded over by a dense mirage, through which here and there are to be discovered the stems of a few distant palm-trees, so broken and disjoined by refraction that they present to the imagination anything but the idea of foliage or shade. The water in the bay is calm and smooth as the polished mirror; not the smallest ripple is to be heard on the beach, to break through the silence of nature; not a breath of air sweeps over ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... to be a fact by several people of apparent truthfulness that it is possible, in circumstances such as these, for each watcher to see the other man's eyes reflected from the mirrors of the periscopes; and it is an undoubted fact that the laws which govern the refraction of light would allow of this phenomenon. Personally, I am glad to say I have never seen a German's eye through a periscope; but then personally I am inclined to doubt if any one has. It must be quite dreadful to see a thing like a poached egg regarding you balefully from the top ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... does not disappear entirely in the Earth's cone of shadow; the solar rays are refracted round our globe by our atmosphere, and curving inward, illumine the lunar globe with a rosy tint that reminds one of the sunset. Sometimes, indeed, this refraction does not occur, owing doubtless to lack of transparency in the atmosphere, and the Moon becomes invisible. This happened recently, on April ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... differences of half a degree or so are accounted for. Refraction at the horizon amounts to about 35' of arc; if we assume that the Egyptian (?) astronomers took it roundly at 30', and that they intended to observe the stars on the true and not the apparent horizon, we find the azimuths would have ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... details, replacing, as it does, merely contiguous associations by the logical ones of identity, similarity, or analogy. If you know a 'law,' you may discharge your memory of masses of particular instances, for the law will reproduce them for you whenever you require them. The law of refraction, for example: If you know that, you can with a pencil and a bit of paper immediately discern how a convex lens, a concave lens, or a prism, must severally alter the appearance of an object. But, if you don't know the general law, ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... throat. "We'll cover it quickly so that we can get to the immediate practical aspects. Are you interested in biodynamics ... umah ... no, of course not. Let me see. Are you at all familiar with the laws pertaining to refraction of ... umah, no." He cleared his throat again, unhappily. "Have you ever seen a medusa, Mr. Crowley? The gelatinous umbrella-shaped free swimming form of marine invertebrate related to the coral polyp ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... inculcating, at least, admits of no solution from it. In short it is this. Before the double convex glass or concave speculum EBF, let the point A be placed at such a distance that the rays proceeding from A, after refraction or reflection, be brought to unite somewhere in the AxAB. And suppose the point of union (i.e. the image of the point A, as hath been already set forth) to be Z; between which and B, the vertex of the glass or speculum, conceive the eye to be anywhere placed. ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... them that what they saw was nothing more than merely buffalo at a distance on the plain; that what they saw that resembled water was simply an optical illusion, called the "mirage." Webster describes the word as follows: "An optical illusion arising from an unequal refraction in the lower strata of the atmosphere and causing remote objects to be seen double, as if reflected in a mirror, or to appear as if suspended in the air. It is frequently seen in the deserts, presenting the appearance of water. The Fata Morgana and ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... of Leyden, introduced the true method of measuring the degrees of longitude and latitude, and Huygens, who had seen his manuscripts, asserted that Snellius had invented, before Descartes, the doctrine of refraction. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... coarse-grained homespun interest as we expect in the comic produce of his hard and heavy hand, makes happily no attempt to emulate the really noble touches of poetry and pathos with which Heywood has thrown out into relief the more serious aspect of the supposed crime of witchcraft in its influence or refraction upon the honor and happiness of innocent persons. Og was naturally more in his place and more in his element as the second "fat jailor" of Lancashire witches than as the second English dramatic poet of Psyche: he has come closer than his precursors, closer indeed than could have been thought ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... eagerly sought. The day had been hot and almost cloudless. The shimmer of heat along the lazy roll of the land to the south had often baffled their blinking eyes. But now the sun was well to the west, and the refraction seemed diminishing, and away over to the northeast a dull-colored cloud seemed slowly rising beyond the ridges. It was this that Sergeant Bruce was studying when he murmured to his ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... take place, if the debt continues to increase. Their reasoning may be compared to that of an astronomer, who observed the position of a planet, but, in his calculations, made no allowance for the refraction of the atmosphere, who would therefore err as to the place of the star, but ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... to go to bed. She had no nerves: she saw life in its proper colours without refraction. The dreadful scene at Wancote had made its full impression on her, but she was not beset like Hyde by visions of what might have been. Still she was tired and subdued, and when Verney had dressed her arm ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... truth, and it's no use hiding it, though 'self-praise is no accommodation,' as the proverb says. You see, sir, I couldn't be happy when you was gone. I missed my dear young master so much. People wondered what was amiss with me, when they found me, as they often did, in a state of refraction. 'Why, Juniper,' they'd say, 'what's amiss? Are you grieving after Mr Frank?' I could only nod dissent; my heart was too full. But I mustn't be too long, a- keeping you too, sir, under the vertebral rays of an Australian sun. I just couldn't stand it no longer—so I gets together ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... which is opaque, and white to the naked eye, is pellucid in a microscope; and a hair seen in this way, loses its former colour, and is, in a great measure, pellucid, with a mixture of some bright sparkling colours, such as appear from the refraction of diamonds, and other pellucid bodies. Blood, to the naked eye, appears all red; but by a good microscope, wherein its lesser parts appear, shows only some few globules of red, swimming in a pellucid liquor, and how these red globules would appear, if glasses ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... respecting the Will, if stripped of unsuitable phraseology, are not very difficult questions. They are about as easy to comprehend as the air-pump, the law of refraction of light, or the atomic theory of chemistry. Distort them by inapposite metaphors, view them in perplexing attitudes, and you may make them more abstruse than the hardest proposition of the "Principia". What is far worse, by involving a simple fact in inextricable ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... that they saw lakes of water in the distance, and hastened on to them; and then they fancied they were close to rivers and islands, covered with luxuriant foliage, but still were doomed to disappointment; as all was the result of the highly-rarefied air, and the refraction of the sun's rays on the sultry plain. What would they have given for a bush even to afford them any shelter from the noonday sun, for the crowns of their heads appeared as if covered with live coal, and their minds began to wander. The poor horses moved at the lowest pace, ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... shone as on immeasurable heights to show where life was. As she travelled deeper and deeper, it was a wonder to see how far that little ray penetrated down and down through gulfs of darkness, blue and cold like the shimmer of a diamond, and even when it could be seen no more, sent yet a shadowy refraction, a line of something less black than the darkness, a lightening amid the gloom, a something indefinable which was hope. The rocks were more cruel than imagination could conceive,—sometimes pointed and sharp like knives, sometimes smooth and upright as a wall with ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... open wings, The beauteous image, in fruition sweet Gladdening the thronged spirits. Each did seem A little ruby, whereon so intense The sun-beam glow'd that to mine eyes it came In clear refraction. And that, which next Befalls me to portray, voice hath not utter'd, Nor hath ink written, nor in fantasy Was e'er conceiv'd. For I beheld and heard The beak discourse; and, what intention form'd Of many, singly as of one express, Beginning: "For that I was ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... polarisation of skylight, the greatest stumbling-block has hitherto been, that, in accordance with the law of Brewster, which makes the index of refraction the tangent of the polarising angle, the reflection which produces perfect polarisation would require to be made in air upon air; and indeed this led many of our most eminent men, Brewster himself among the number, to entertain the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... with it. I scarcely think that Marius ever speaks or is spoken to audibly in the whole course of the book; such at least is the impression that it leaves. The scenes of the story reach the reader by refraction, as it were, through the medium of Pater's harmonious murmur. But scenes they must be; not even Pater at his dreamiest can tell a story without incident particularized and caught in the act. When Marius takes a journey, visits a philosopher or enters a church, the event stands ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... sleep, consciousness becomes active in its subtle (four-dimensional) vehicle, and ranges free throughout the ampler spaces of this subtler world. In deep sleep, consciousness reverts to its pure condition—the individual self becomes the All-Self: the rainbow, no longer prismatic by reason of its refraction in materiality, becomes the pure white light; the melody of life resolves itself into the primordial harmony; sequence becomes simultaneity, and Time, no longer "besprent with seven-hued circumstance," is swallowed up ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... must first correct the Index Error. Then you subtract the Dip and the Refraction in Altitude, take the sun's semi-diameter from the Nautical Almanac, and add the ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... genius lies in the power of conceiving humanity in a new and striking way, of putting a happy world of its own creation in place of the meaner world of our common days, generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, according to [214] the choice of the imaginative intellect. In exercising this power, painting and poetry have a variety of subject almost unlimited. The range of characters or persons open to them is as various as life itself; no ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... smiling people, abruptly destiny begins drawing with a bolder hand. Suppose the Japanese were to make up their minds to accelerate whatever process of synthesis were possible in China! Suppose, after all, I am not the victim of atmospheric refraction, and they are, indeed, as gallant and bold and intelligent as my baseless conception of them would have them be! They would almost certainly find co-operative elements among the educated Chinese.... But ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... usual in the case of a blind, or useless, eye. It was very much shattered, but its character was obvious. The glass of the left eye was much thicker and fortunately less damaged, so that I was able accurately to test its refraction. ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... themselves and which never become accessible to our psychic perception, corresponding to the lenses of the telescope which design the image. If we continue this comparison, we may say that the censor between two systems corresponds to the refraction of rays during their ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... descends again straight to the horizon from which it rose; at the nightward edge, once in eighty-eight days, the sun peeps above the horizon and quickly sinks from sight again. The result is that, neglecting the effects of atmospheric refraction, which would tend to expand the borders of the domain of sunlight, about one quarter of the entire surface of Mercury is, with regard to day and night, in a condition resembling that of our polar regions, where there is but one day and one night in ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... is explained in the same way as are the things that took place in the other experiments in refraction, or bending of light. The light from the part of the pencil above the water comes straight to your eye, of course; so you see it just as it is. But the light from the part of the pencil in the ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... illuminated by the solar rays, before any part of the dark hemisphere was visible. Soon afterward, the whole dark limb became illuminated. This prolongation of the cusps beyond the semicircle, I thought, must have arisen from the refraction of the sun's rays by the moon's atmosphere. I computed, also, the height of the atmosphere (which could refract light enough into its dark hemisphere to produce a twilight more luminous than the light reflected from the earth when the moon is about 32 degrees ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... writhing sun glare played the same trick with his own vision. Something a dirty white quivered above the black lava table like the loose canvas top of a tented wagon. The Ranger side-stepped the trail for a different angle of refraction. The object blurred, then reappeared, a leaf from a note book not thirty yards away. Wayland went quickly forward. He was aware as he walked that the shrivelled earth heaved and sank so that he had the sensation of staggering. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... different from his neighbour's, and all more or less imperfect, it was impossible that the absolute objective truth of anything could be seen by any mortal, but only some partial approximation, and, as it were, sketch of it, according as the object was represented with more or less refraction on the mirror of his subjectivity. And therefore, as the true inquirer deals only with the possible, and lets the impossible go, it was the business of the wise man, shunning the search after absolute truth as an impious attempt of the Titans to scale Olympus, to busy himself humbly ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... arranged so as to cause a series of eight lenses one foot in diameter and three feet focal distance to revolve with any velocity up to sixty revolutions per minute round a central lamp. The light from this lamp being concentrated by refraction through the eight lenses into eight pencils, having a divergence of about eight degrees each, illuminated when at rest not quite fifty degrees of the horizon; but when this system of lenses was put into rapid motion, every degree of the ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... accusations had been brought. This "Jacques," whom the speaker erroneously calls "John," and who might stand for any victim of middle-age fanaticism, was burned in Paris in 1314; and the "Interlude," we are told, "would seem to be a reminiscence of this event, as distorted by two centuries of refraction from Flemish brain to brain." The scene is carried on by one singer, in a succession of verses, and by a chorus which takes up the last and most significant words of each verse; the organ accompanying in ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... highest summit of all towers to a height of 22,606 feet above the surface of the lunar disc. At the same period the examination of the moon was completed. She appeared completely riddled with craters, and her essentially volcanic character was apparent at each observation. By the absence of refraction in the rays of the planets occulted by her we conclude that she is absolutely devoid of an atmosphere. The absence of air entails the absence of water. It became, therefore, manifest that the Selenites, ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... celestial bodies." "Not at all," you say; "the earth is made up largely of chalk, and what is the difference between chalk and cheese, except in the price?" "But, if it's green cheese the moon is made of," asks your opponent, "why does it look yellow?" "Only the natural effect of atmospheric refraction," you reply calmly; "remember how a politician's badly soiled reputation will shine out a brilliant white, through the favourable atmosphere that surrounds a Congressional investigating committee. Recall how a lady who is green with envy at her neighbour's new hat will turn ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... no time for aim, but seeing a vague shadow below the boat, he allowed for the refraction of the water, and threw the small barbed spear with all his might. His cast was as clean as though he were experienced, and as he grasped the rope he cried to ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... had set about the time they had begun, and the twilight had deepened into dark; but they had not cared to close the shutters as they were to move so soon. The four candles shone out through the windows, and there still hung a pale glimmer outside owing to the refraction of light from the white stones of the terrace. Beyond on the left there sloped away a high black wall of impenetrable darkness where the yew hedge stood; over that was the starless sky. Sir Nicholas' study was bright with candlelight, and the lace and jewels of Lady Maxwell ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... of reflection or refraction, the snows of Monte Sfiorito had become bright green, as if the light that fell on them had passed through emeralds. They both paused, to gaze and marvel for a little. Indeed, the prospect was a pleasing one, as well as a surprising—the sunny ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... winds while he kept watch over the sea and the icebergs in view, and from which he signalled danger and sometimes gave orders to the crew. The nights were short; the sun had reappeared since the 31st of January in consequence of the refraction, and seemed to get higher and higher above the horizon. But the snow impeded the view, and if it did not cause complete obscurity it rendered ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... crystal Nemalite (which he himself discovered) in the very same way as a beam of light is polarised by the crystal Tourmaline. He then showed that a large number of substances, which are opaque to Light (e.g. pitch, coal-tar etc.) are transparent to Electric Waves. He next determined the Index of Refraction of various substances for invisible Electric Radiation and thereby eliminated a great difficulty which had presented itself in Maxwell's theory as to the relation between the index of refraction of light and the di-electric constant of insulators. ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... made to the article REFRACTION for the general discussion of the phenomenon known as the refraction of light. It is there shown that every substance, transparent to light, has a definite refractive index, which is the ratio of the velocity of light in vacuo to its velocity in the medium to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... him thought that the sun moved round the earth every day, and that on that particular occasion it stood still for a time, thus causing the light to remain longer; and I would say, that they did not conjecture that, from the amount of snow in the air (see Josh. x:11), the refraction may have been greater than usual, or that there may have been some other cause which we will not ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... went on to remark that as another result of the thinness of the Martian atmosphere twilight is much shorter than on the earth, the light being less diffused when the sun is below the horizon, and refraction also considerably less than ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... changements qui arrivent a la matiere; ce que je confirme par i'explication des effets les plus generaux de la Physique, tels que sont la durete des corps, leur fluidite, leur pesanteur, legerete, la lumiere et la refraction et reflexion de ses rayons."—Malebranche, "Recherche de la ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... after parting from the brig we encountered a tropical storm. The sun rose red and angry, and owing to the great refraction appeared three times its natural size. It climbed lazily to the zenith, and at noon we were shadowless. The sky was as calm as a vault, and the surface of the water was like burnished steel. The heat became so stifling that even the Africans were gasping for breath, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... to study the mythopoetic instinct as it manifests itself in modern life, in the daily refraction of fact through the medium of imagination (a medium whose power of refraction is far greater than that of water). Because we no longer create gods and goddesses, or people the woods and brooks with fairies ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... dusk, but the two regiments engaged in the flanking movement pushed on to gain the bluff. Just as they reached the crest of the ridge the moon rose from behind, enlarged by the refraction of the atmosphere, and as the attacking column passed along the summit it crossed the moon's disk and disclosed to us below a most interesting panorama, every figure nearly being thrown out in full relief. The enemy, now outflanked on left ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... observatories we employ telescopes of two entirely different classes. The more familiar forms are those known as refractors, in which the operation of condensing the rays of light is conducted by refraction. The character of the refractor is shown in Fig. 1. The rays from the star fall upon the object-glass at the end of the telescope, and on passing through they become refracted into a converging beam, so that all ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... course, subject to refraction, reflection, and absorption by the millions of minute globules of ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... by means of clockwork, were fed with mineral oil, a refined kerosine; and the refraction was caused ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... slip or shake among the bodies fixed in the heavens, dislodging any one of them, would be followed by the fall of the whole of them. For no one of the stars is now in the same place in which it was at first; for they, being, according to him, like stones and heavy, shine by the refraction of the upper air round about them, and are carried along forcibly by the violence of the circular motion by which they were originally withheld from falling, when cold and heavy bodies were first separated from the general universe. But there is a more probable ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... time not in the sharp peaks and spires we had first seen, but in a chain of pale blue egg-shaped islands, floating in the air a long way above the horizon. This peculiar appearance was the result of extreme refraction, for, later in the day, we had an opportunity of watching the oval cloud-like forms gradually harden into the same pink tapering spikes which originally caused the island to be called Spitzbergen: nay, so clear did it become, that even the shadows on ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... of sight, without the slightest alteration in the line of vision, he will find that it takes in the entire breadth of a large room, and that up to a very short distance before him; and imperfectly, by a refraction, I believe, in the eye itself, to a point very near indeed. Next to nothing that passed in the room, ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... disagreeable sensation produced by it returned. I determined to go home and place myself in the same position—as regards the mirror—and if the same effect was produced, I would make up my mind that it was the natural result of some principle of refraction or optics, which I did not understand, and dismiss it. I tried the experiment with the same result; and as I had said to myself, accounted for it on some principle unknown to me, and it then ceased ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... tension of the eyeball is essential to ocular refraction, and closely related to ocular nutrition. Fully to understand the mechanism for its regulation would carry us far toward an understanding of the causes of glaucoma. Normal tension is maintained with a continuous flow of fluid into the eye and ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various
... horizon was occupied by haze, and produced a very remarkable effect upon the land, which was so raised above the horizon by refraction that many distant objects became visible that could not otherwise have been seen. This mirage had been frequently observed by us on various parts of the coast, but never produced so extraordinary ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... to say that the highest divine being of American or African native peoples has been borrowed from Europeans, and is, especially, a savage refraction from the God of missionaries. If this can be proved, the shadowy, practically powerless "Master of Life" of certain barbaric peoples, will have degenerated from the Christian conception, because of that conception he will be only a faint unsuccessful ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... 44. Albategnius that noble Arabian, on his death-bed, saw a ship ascending and descending, which Fracastorius records of his friend Baptista Tirrianus. Weak sight and a vain persuasion withal, may effect as much, and second causes concurring, as an oar in water makes a refraction, and seems bigger, bended double, &c. The thickness of the air may cause such effects, or any object not well-discerned in the dark, fear and phantasy will suspect to be a ghost, a devil, &c. [2702]Quod nimis miseri timent, hoc facile ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... pollute it at your pleasure and at your peril; for on the peace of those weak waves must all the heaven you shall ever gain be first seen; and through such purity as you can win for those dark waves must all the light of the risen Sun of Righteousness be bent down by faint refraction. Cleanse them, and calm them, as you love your life. Therefore it is that all the power of nature depends on subjection to the human soul. Man is the Sun of the world; more than the real sun. The fire of his wonderful heart is the only light and heat worth gauge ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... of a circle, consisting of the prismatic colors, formed by the refraction and the reflection of rays of light from drops of rain or vapor, appearing in the part of the ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... of the world around him, not as the bather sees it, blurred and indistinct, but in the calm splendor of its own thallassphere. The first thought is one of unspeakable admiration of the miraculous beauty of everything around him—a glory and a splendor of refraction, interference and reflection that puts to shame the Arabian story of the kingdom of the Blue Fish. Above him is that pure golden canopy with its rare glimmering lustrousness—something like the soft, dewy effulgence that comes with sun-breaks through showery afternoons. The soft delicacy of that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... lectures, receptions, and exhibitions, made models of each other, and rendered their walls hideous with bad likenesses of all their friends. Their conversation ceased to be intelligible to the uninitiated, and they prattled prettily of "chiaro oscuro, French sauce, refraction of the angle of the eye, seventh spinus process, depth and juiciness of color, tender touch, and a good tone." Even in dress the artistic disorder was visible; some cast aside crinoline altogether, and stalked about with ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... then ten in the morning; the rays of the sun struck the surface of the waves at rather an oblique angle, and at the touch of their light, decomposed by refraction as through a prism, flowers, rocks, plants, shells, and polypi were shaded at the edges by the seven solar colours. It was marvellous, a feast for the eyes, this complication of coloured tints, a perfect kaleidoscope ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... state that the earth, as seen from a highflying balloon, used to be almost always described as appearing concave, or like a huge basin, and ingenious attempts were made to prove mathematically that this must be so. The laws of refraction are brought in to prove the fact; or, again, the case is stated thus: Supposing the extreme horizon to be seen when the balloon is little more than a mile high, the range of view on all sides will then be, roughly, some eighty miles. If, then, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... importance, because thereby the theory is excluded, or at least made extremely improbable, that the phenomenon of refraction is to be ascribed to, a ring of vapor surrounding the sun for a great distance. Indeed, such a refraction should cause a deviation in the observed direction, and, in order to produce the displacement of one of ...
— The Einstein Theory of Relativity • H.A. Lorentz
... hand, I used to find Paul Tichlorne plunged as deeply into the study of light polarization, diffraction, and interference, single and double refraction, and all manner of ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... evening cloud impress'd, Bent in vast curve, the watery meteor shines Delightfully, to th' levell'd sun opposed: Lovely refraction ! while the vivid brede In listed colours glows, th' unconscious swain, With vacant eye, gazes on the divine Phenomenon, gleaming o'er the illumined fields, Or runs to catch the treasures which ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... but, through the imperfection of his instruments, his success was much less than that method was capable of affording. The bringing it into general use was reserved for Dr Maskelyne, our Astronomer Royal. See the preface to the Tables for correcting the Effects of Refraction and Parallax, published by the Board of Longitude, under the direction of Dr Shepherd, Flumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... other, in the direction of its length. The surfaces of this section, after having been carefully polished, are cemented together again by means of Canada balsam. A ray of light, on entering the prism, is separated by the double refraction of the calc-spar into an ordinary and an extraordinary ray; the former undergoes total reflection at the layer of balsam at an incidence which allows the extraordinary ray to be transmitted; the latter, therefore, passes through unchanged. This principle ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... on the measurement by the phenomena of interference of the refractive index of a column of air subjected to the temperature it is desired to measure. It appears admissible that even at the highest temperatures the variation of the power of refraction is strictly proportional to that of the density, for this proportion is exactly verified so long as it is possible to check it precisely. We can thus, by a method which offers the great advantage of being independent of the power and dimension of the envelopes employed—since the length ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... charts were studied. The atmospheric conditions were such that it was very possible that due to refraction Venus would have been visible just on the horizon. The fact that the UFO faded so fast would bear this out because the conditions for such refraction are critical and a slight change in atmospheric conditions could easily have caused the ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... aperture and 52 feet focus, and it would have been impossible to have bestowed the necessary attention upon it had we made a business of observing. That instrument is nearly finished, and I hope it will effect something for astronomy. The unequal refraction of the atmosphere will limit its powers, but how far remains to be ascertained.... Lady Rosse joins me in very kind remembrances and believe me ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... force of the waves, displayed the phenomenon of a waterfall, the water rushing into the sea from the height of thirty feet. If the sun had pierced the vapoury veil which concealed it from our view, the refraction of his rays would have given to the ice the many-coloured tints of the rainbow. We took care to keep a good look out; but the fog was thick. We fell in with many other icebergs; but ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... Hire. And, although I have since corrected and changed some parts, the copies which I had made of it at that time may serve for proof that I have yet added nothing to it save some conjectures touching the formation of Iceland Crystal, and a novel observation on the refraction of Rock Crystal. I have desired to relate these particulars to make known how long I have meditated the things which now I publish, and not for the purpose of detracting from the merit of those who, without having seen anything that I have written, may be found to have treated of like ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... Aran near Galway, alluded to in the 'Chorographical description of West, or H-Ier-Connaught', of R. O'Flaherty—was caused by the peculiar angle of the light from the setting sun, the reflection of the water of the Solway, and the refraction of the vapour and clouds above the Solway. These aerial and visionary horsemen were being exercised somewhere above the Kirkcudbright shore. It was not the first time the phenomenon had been seen within historic times, on the same fell-side, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... a majestic sound, a roar as of the tempest, mounted towards them and, as if a humid fog had been projected into the air, the atmosphere sensibly freshened. Below were the liquid masses. They seemed like an enormous flowing sheet of crystal amid a thousand rainbows due to refraction as it decomposed the solar rays. The sight ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... object at which Elizabeth gazed when they renewed their journey, after their encountre with Richard, was the sun, as it expanded in the refraction of the horizon, and over whose disk the dark umbrage of a pine was stealing, while it slowly sank behind the western hills. But his setting rays darted along the openings of the mountain he was on, and lighted the shining covering of the birches, until their smooth ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Vibration. Velocity of Sound. Sound Reflections. Resonance. Echos. Speaking Trumpet. The Stethoscope. The Vitascope. The Phonautograph. The Phonograph. Light. The Corpuscular Theory. Undulatory Theory. Luminous Bodies. Velocity of Light. Reflection. Refraction. Colors. The Spectroscope. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... light to the lower one, down through the immense cylinder. Around each oval is built a series of fin protectors, which is the only part about the telescope I could not fully understand. They seemed to counteract the refraction of the water, and yet the water must be in the ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... the great—brilliancy—and refraction of light, on this angle, where the stone has got polished by rubbing against other stones, in the course of ages, I'm inclined to ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... with cliffs, rise up from the bosom of the lake, remain awhile, and disappear. Hardly a day passes, during the summer, without a more or less striking exhibition of this kind. The same phenomena of rapidly varying refraction may often be witnessed at sunset, when the sun, sinking into the lake, undergoes a most striking series of changes. At one moment it is drawn out into a pear-like shape; the next it takes an elliptical ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... variously deflected from their normal course, so that on emerging we have each of these coloured rays travelling in its own direction, vibrating in its own plane. It is well to remember that the bending off, or deflection, or refraction, is towards the thick end of the prism always, and that those of the coloured rays in that analysed band, the spectrum, most bent away from the original line of direction of the white light striking the prism, are said to be the most refrangible ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... were replenished with bituminous coal from a seam in the cliff above Cape Lisburne, that an effort was made to reach the island. During the run westward—a distance of 245 miles—the fine weather enabled us to witness some curious freaks of refraction and other odd phenomena for which the high latitudes are so remarkable. On July 30, the fine weather continuing, everybody was correspondingly elate and merry when both Herald and Wrangel islands were sighted from the "cro'-nest" ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... ponds I have never seen satisfactorily explained. They have usually been attributed to a refraction, by which a section of the bordering sky is thrown below the horizon; but I am convinced that they are the effect of reflection. It seems that a gas (emanating probably from the heated earth and ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... Isn't it fine?" "That is the very thing I want to tell you about. The sun, shining upon vapor and falling water, makes all these beautiful colors. That is the way I mix the rainbow. The science which teaches about the rays of light, their reflection and refraction, and the coloring they give to different objects, is called Optics: it is an interesting study, and I wish you to be a proficient in it." "Optics, is it? That seems to me very different from blowing soap-bubbles. I do hate to be cheated into learning big words, ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... but found it difficult in consequence of the allowance necessary for the refraction of the water and the movement of the fish. There is a great temptation to strike in an apparently direct line with the fish, which I need hardly say, even if the fish be stationary does not go near it. I only succeeded in piercing two. But I afterwards went out with a spoon and very ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... stars, or do we not sometimes con our voyage by what seem to us the firm and familiar headlands of truth, planted by God himself, but which may, after all, be no more than an insubstantial mockery of cloud or airy juggle of mirage? The refraction of our own atmosphere has by no means made an end of its tricks with the appearances of things in our little world of thought. The men of that day believed what they saw, or, as our generation would put it, what they ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Genesis ix:13, God tells Noah that He will set His bow in the cloud; this action of God's is but another way of expressing the refraction and reflection which the rays of the sun are subjected to in drops ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... cried, and his cheeks flushed with annoyance. "Think of my wasting three cartridges in that fashion! If I had him at Bisley I'd shoot the turban off him, but this vibrating glare means refraction. What's the ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle |
