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Augustin-Jean Fresnel
Augustin-Jean Fresnel (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 until the end of the 19th century. He is perhaps better known for inventing the catadioptric (reflective/refractive) Fresnel lens and for pioneering the use of "stepped" lenses to extend the visibility of lighthouses, saving countless lives at sea. The simpler dioptric (purely refractive) stepped lens, first proposed by Count Buffon and independently reinvented by Fresnel, is used in screen magnifiers and in condenser lenses for overhead projectors. By expressing Huygens's principle of secondary waves and Young's principle of interference in quantitative terms, and supposing that simple colors consist of sinusoidal waves, Fresnel gave the first satisfactory explanation of diffraction by straight edges, including t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Broglie, Eure
Broglie () is a commune in the Eure department in Normandy in northern France. Population See also *Communes of the Eure department The following is a list of the 585 communes of the Eure department of France. The communes cooperate in the following intercommunalities (as of 2020):Communes of Eure {{Eure-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fresnel Number
The Fresnel number (''F''), named after the physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel, is a dimensionless number occurring in optics, in particular in scalar diffraction theory. Definition For an electromagnetic wave passing through an aperture and hitting a screen, the Fresnel number ''F'' is defined as : F = \frac where : a is the characteristic size (e.g. radius) of the aperture : L is the distance of the screen from the aperture : \lambda is the incident wavelength. Conceptually, it is the number of half-period zones in the wavefront amplitude, counted from the center to the edge of the aperture, as seen from the observation point (the center of the imaging screen), where a half-period zone is defined so that the wavefront phase changes by \pi when moving from one half-period zone to the next. An equivalent definition is that the Fresnel number is the difference, expressed in half-wavelengths, between the ''slant'' distance from the observation point to the ''edge'' of the aperture ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Academy Of Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at the forefront of scientific developments in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, and is one of the earliest Academies of Sciences. Currently headed by Patrick Flandrin (President of the Academy), it is one of the five Academies of the Institut de France. History The Academy of Sciences traces its origin to Colbert's plan to create a general academy. He chose a small group of scholars who met on 22 December 1666 in the King's library, near the present-day Bibliothèque Nationals, and thereafter held twice-weekly working meetings there in the two rooms assigned to the group. The first 30 years of the Academy's existence were relatively informal, since no statutes had as yet been laid down for the institution. In contrast to its Brit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Humphrey Lloyd (physicist)
Humphrey Lloyd Royal Society of London, FRS FRSE Royal Irish Academy, MRIA (1800–1881) was an Irish physicist. He was Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin (1831-1843) and much later Provost (1867–1881). Lloyd is known for experimentally verifying conical refraction, a theoretical prediction made by William Rowan Hamilton about the way light is bent when travelling through a Optic axis of a crystal, biaxial crystal. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and President of both the British Association and the Royal Irish Academy. Early life The eldest son of the Rev. Bartholomew Lloyd, and his wife, Eleanor McLaughlin, he was born in Dublin on 16 April 1800. His father had also served as Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and Provost of TCD. After early education at Mr. White's school in Dublin, he entered Trinity College Dublin in 1815, first out of 63 competitors in the entrance examination. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Rowan Hamilton
Sir William Rowan Hamilton LL.D, DCL, MRIA, FRAS (3/4 August 1805 – 2 September 1865) was an Irish mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. He was the Andrews Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College Dublin, and Royal Astronomer of Ireland, living at Dunsink Observatory. Hamilton's scientific career included the study of geometrical optics, ideas from Fourier analysis, and his work on quaternions which made him one of the founders of modern linear algebra. He made major contributions in optics, classical mechanics and abstract algebra. His work was fundamental to modern theoretical physics, particularly his reformulation of Newtonian mechanics, now called Hamiltonian mechanics. It is now central both to electromagnetism and to quantum mechanics. Early life Hamilton was the fourth of nine children born to Sarah Hutton (1780–1817) and Archibald Hamilton (1778–1819),Bruno (2003) who lived in Dublin at 29 Dominick Street, later renumbered to 36. Hamilton's fath ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Augustin-Louis Cauchy
Baron Augustin-Louis Cauchy (, ; ; 21 August 178923 May 1857) was a French mathematician, engineer, and physicist who made pioneering contributions to several branches of mathematics, including mathematical analysis and continuum mechanics. He was one of the first to state and rigorously prove theorems of calculus, rejecting the heuristic principle of the generality of algebra of earlier authors. He almost singlehandedly founded complex analysis and the study of permutation groups in abstract algebra. A profound mathematician, Cauchy had a great influence over his contemporaries and successors; Hans Freudenthal stated: "More concepts and theorems have been named for Cauchy than for any other mathematician (in elasticity alone there are sixteen concepts and theorems named for Cauchy)." Cauchy was a prolific writer; he wrote approximately eight hundred research articles and five complete textbooks on a variety of topics in the fields of mathematics and mathematical physics. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
François Arago
Dominique François Jean Arago ( ca, Domènec Francesc Joan Aragó), known simply as François Arago (; Catalan: ''Francesc Aragó'', ; 26 February 17862 October 1853), was a French mathematician, physicist, astronomer, freemason, supporter of the Carbonari revolutionaries and politician. Early life and work Arago was born at Estagel, a small village of 3,000 near Perpignan, in the ' of Pyrénées-Orientales, France, where his father held the position of Treasurer of the Mint. His parents were François Bonaventure Arago (1754–1814) and Marie Arago (1755–1845). Arago was the eldest of four brothers. Jean (1788–1836) emigrated to North America and became a general in the Mexican army. Jacques Étienne Victor (1799–1855) took part in Louis de Freycinet's exploring voyage in the ''Uranie'' from 1817 to 1821, and on his return to France devoted himself to his journalism and the drama. The fourth brother, Étienne Vincent (1802–1892), is said to have collaborated with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Young (scientist)
Thomas Young FRS (13 June 177310 May 1829) was a British polymath who made notable contributions to the fields of vision, light, solid mechanics, energy, physiology, language, musical harmony, and Egyptology. He was instrumental in the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, specifically the Rosetta Stone. Young has been described as " The Last Man Who Knew Everything". His work influenced that of William Herschel, Hermann von Helmholtz, James Clerk Maxwell, and Albert Einstein. Young is credited with establishing the wave theory of light, in contrast to the particle theory of Isaac Newton. Young's work was subsequently supported by the work of Augustin-Jean Fresnel. Personal life Young belonged to a Quaker family of Milverton, Somerset, where he was born in 1773, the eldest of ten children. At the age of fourteen Young had learned Greek and Latin. Young began to study medicine in London at St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1792, moved to the University of Edinburgh Medi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christiaan Huygens
Christiaan Huygens, Lord of Zeelhem, ( , , ; also spelled Huyghens; la, Hugenius; 14 April 1629 – 8 July 1695) was a Dutch mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor, who is regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time and a major figure in the Scientific Revolution. In physics, Huygens made groundbreaking contributions in optics and mechanics, while as an astronomer he is chiefly known for his studies of the rings of Saturn and the discovery of its moon Titan. As an engineer and inventor, he improved the design of telescopes and invented the pendulum clock, a breakthrough in timekeeping and the most accurate timekeeper for almost 300 years. An exceptionally talented mathematician and physicist, Huygens was the first to idealize a physical problem by a set of mathematical parameters, and the first to fully mathematize a mechanistic explanation of an unobservable physical phenomenon.Dijksterhuis, F.J. (2008) Stevin, Huygens and the Dutch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Physical Optics
In physics, physical optics, or wave optics, is the branch of optics that studies interference, diffraction, polarization, and other phenomena for which the ray approximation of geometric optics is not valid. This usage tends not to include effects such as quantum noise in optical communication, which is studied in the sub-branch of coherence theory. Principle ''Physical optics'' is also the name of an approximation commonly used in optics, electrical engineering and applied physics. In this context, it is an intermediate method between geometric optics, which ignores wave effects, and full wave electromagnetism, which is a precise theory. The word "physical" means that it is more physical than geometric or ray optics and not that it is an exact physical theory. This approximation consists of using ray optics to estimate the field on a surface and then integrating that field over the surface to calculate the transmitted or scattered field. This resembles the Born ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polarization (waves)
Polarization ( also polarisation) is a property applying to transverse waves that specifies the geometrical orientation of the oscillations. In a transverse wave, the direction of the oscillation is perpendicular to the direction of motion of the wave. A simple example of a polarized transverse wave is vibrations traveling along a taut string ''(see image)''; for example, in a musical instrument like a guitar string. Depending on how the string is plucked, the vibrations can be in a vertical direction, horizontal direction, or at any angle perpendicular to the string. In contrast, in longitudinal waves, such as sound waves in a liquid or gas, the displacement of the particles in the oscillation is always in the direction of propagation, so these waves do not exhibit polarization. Transverse waves that exhibit polarization include electromagnetic waves such as light and radio waves, gravitational waves, and transverse sound waves ( shear waves) in solids. An electromagneti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phasor
In physics and engineering, a phasor (a portmanteau of phase vector) is a complex number representing a sine wave, sinusoidal function whose amplitude (''A''), angular frequency (''ω''), and Phase (waves), initial phase (''θ'') are time-invariant system, time-invariant. It is related to a more general concept called analytic signal, analytic representation,Bracewell, Ron. ''The Fourier Transform and Its Applications''. McGraw-Hill, 1965. p269 which decomposes a sinusoid into the product of a complex constant and a factor depending on time and frequency. The complex constant, which depends on amplitude and phase, is known as a phasor, or complex amplitude, and (in older texts) sinor or even complexor. A common situation in electrical networks powered by Alternating current, time varying current is the existence of multiple sinusoids all with the same frequency, but different amplitudes and phases. The only difference in their analytic representations is the complex amplitude ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
