Light Refraction Quotes

I remarked constantly, just at sunset, in these latitudes, that the eastern horizon was brilliantly illuminated with a kind of mock sunset. This in a short time disappeared, to be soon succeeded by another similar in character, but more faint.

We might be the holographic image of a two-dimensional structure.

If you look at the soap bubbles in the sink when you're doing dishes, you'll see the incredible diversity of shapes in there. There are cubes in there; there are decahedrons and tetrahedrons; there are odd, irregular shapes without names, you know.

The fascinating thing, is not to show the source of light, but the effect of light.

When the light returns to its source, it takes nothing of what it has illuminated.

If you understand how a rainbow works, it does not make it less magnificent; it makes it more magnificent.

There is no greater mystery to me than that of light traveling through darkness.

Do not the Rays of Light which fall upon Bodies, and are reflected or refracted, begin to bend before they arrive at the Bodies; and are they not reflected, refracted, and inflected, by one and the same Principle, acting variously in various Circumstances?

When we consider the fact that nearly three-quarters of the surface of the globe is covered by oceanic water, we begin to realise that the molecular scattering of light in liquids may possess an astronomical significance, in fact contribute in an important degree to the observed albedo of the earth.

Do not the Rays which differ in Refrangibility differ also in Flexibity; and are they not by their different Inflexions separated from one another, so as after separation to make the Colours in the three Fringes above described? And after what manner are they inflected to make those Fringes?

A rainbow which lasts for a quarter of an hour is looked at no longer.

The bubbles are thinner than wavelengths of light.

I have been sitting watching that ever since I came back, the continuous variations of light and shadow.

From what has been said it is also evident, that the Whiteness of the Sun's Light is compounded all the Colours wherewith the several sorts of Rays whereof that Light consists, when by their several Refrangibilities they are separated from one another, do tinge Paper or any other white Body whereon they fall. For those Colours ... are unchangeable, and whenever all those Rays with those their Colours are mix'd again, they reproduce the same white Light as before.

The reason we have the stars twinkle at night is because the light is being kind of blurred by the atmosphere around the Earth. That is why the Hubble Space Telescope is so good, because it is above the atmosphere. So it is kind of like looking at the sun from the bottom of a swimming pool, versus looking at the sun above the swimming pool.

I just think white light generation is just one of these remarkable things to see, and actually, you know, one colour of light goes in to just water or any clear anything and out comes all the colours of the rainbow when the pulses are short and intense enough.

Looking through the atmosphere is somewhat like looking through a piece of old, stained glass. The glass has defects in it, so the image is blurred from that.

I imagined there would be a way to crack the diffraction barrier. But of course I didn't know exactly how it would work, but I had a gut feeling that there must be something, and so I tried to think about it, to be creative.

Prism! Where is that baby?

The rainbow is such a remarkable phenomenon of nature, and its cause has been so meticulously sought after by inquiring minds throughout the ages, that I could not choose a more appropriate subject for demonstrating how, with the method I am using, we can arrive at knowledge not possessed at all by those whose writings are available to us.

Hubble is the most important telescope in history after Galileo's first telescope.

With the phase-contrast method still in the first somewhat primitive stage, I went in 1932 to the Zeiss Works in Jena to demonstrate. It was not received with such enthusiasm as I had expected.

Stars appear as pin-points of light. They don't twinkle there as they do when we see them from earth because the atmospheric blanket is not there.

Light refused increases darkness.