The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Vol. 12: July-December, 1856 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Vol. 12: July-December, 1856

A Question between two fundamentally different views of the theory of polarization, which has been long agitated among inquirers into the undulatory theory, viz. as to the direction of the plane of vibrations in relation to that of polarization, has of late excited more peculiar interest, partly from the announcement, a few years ago, of a remarkable crucial experiment by Professor Stokes, and partly from several subsequent investigations, especially the recent elaborate discussion of the general bearing of the experimental evidence by M. Haidinger.

The revival of this question recalls the attention of the student to the very unsatisfactory condition in which the elementary demonstration of those parts of the theory on which it depends has long been left, and from which recent speculations have done little to deliver it.

The well-known and remarkable formulas originally given by Fresnel to express the amplitudes of the vibrations, and thence the intensities, of reflected and refracted rays of polarized light (for singly-refracting media), which are found to represent so beautifully all the observed changes, - in fact including the whole doctrine of plane polarization, and thus invaluable as inductive laws, - yet long remained confessedly defective as to their systematic deduction from theory.

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