Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The Huygens–Fresnel principle (named after Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens and French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel) states that every point on a wavefront is itself the source of spherical wavelets, and the secondary wavelets emanating from different points mutually interfere. [1] The sum of these spherical wavelets forms a new wavefront.
Following his remarks on the propagation medium and the speed of light, Huygens gives a geometric illustration of the wavefront, the foundation of what became known as Huygens’ Principle. His principle of propagation is a demonstration of how a wave of light (or rather a pulse) emanating from a point also results in smaller wavelets: [12]
Huygens principle of double refraction, named after Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens, explains the phenomenon of double refraction observed in uniaxial anisotropic material such as calcite. When unpolarized light propagates in such materials (along a direction different from the optical axis ), it splits into two different rays, known as ...
Augustin-Jean Fresnel [Note 1] (10 May 1788 – 14 July 1827) was a French civil engineer and physicist whose research in optics led to the almost unanimous acceptance of the wave theory of light, excluding any remnant of Newton's corpuscular theory, from the late 1830s [3] until the end of the 19th century.
The Hamilton optico-mechanical analogy is closely related to Fermat's principle and thus to the Huygens–Fresnel principle. [10] Fermat's principle states that the rays between wavefronts will take the path least time; the concept of successive wavefronts derives from Huygens principle.
It is an extension of Huygens–Fresnel principle, which describes each point on a wavefront as a spherical wave source. The equivalence of the imaginary surface currents are enforced by the uniqueness theorem in electromagnetism , which dictates that a unique solution can be determined by fixing a boundary condition on a system.
Today this principle is known as the Huygens–Fresnel principle. Huygens invented the pendulum clock in 1657, which he patented the same year. His horological research resulted in an extensive analysis of the pendulum in Horologium Oscillatorium (1673), regarded as one of the most important 17th century works on mechanics. [6]
For Huygens and Newton centrifugal force was the result of a curvilinear motion of a body; hence it was located in nature, in the object of investigation. According to a more recent formulation of classical mechanics, centrifugal force depends on the choice of how phenomena can be conveniently represented.