Translations:Huygens’ principle/2/en
At about the same time that Newton was emphasizing the particle theory of light in England, Christiaan Huygens on the continent was greatly extending the wave theory. Unlike Descartes, Hooke, and Newton, Huygens correctly concluded that light effectively slows down on entering denser media. He derived the laws of reflection and refraction and even explained with his wave theory the double-refraction phenomenon observed in a specimen of the mineral calcite (Robinson and Clark, 1986[1]). While Huygens was working with calcite, he discovered the phenomenon called polarization. In his words, “as there are two different refractions, I conceived also that there are two different emanations of the waves of light” (Huygens, 1690[2], Chapter 5, Section 18).
- ↑ Robinson, E. A., and R. D. Clark, 1986, Sparring over light: The Leading Edge, 5, no. 4, 39–41.
- ↑ Huygens, C., 1690, Traité de la Lumière [Treatise on Light, in which are explained the causes of that which occurs in reflection and in refraction, and particularly in the strange refraction of Iceland Crystal]: The Hague. Republished by Macmillan and Company, London, 1912.