Report of the Annual Meeting Volume 1893 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 Excerpt: ...with a Rowland grating will rejoice to know that his map also is now finished. Lord Rayleigh's paper on 'The Intensity of Light reflected from Water and Mercury at nearly perpendicular incidence, '3 combined with the experiments on reflexion from liquid surfaces in the neighbourhood of the polarising angle,4 establishes results of the utmost importance to optical theory. 'There is thus, ' Lord Rayleigh concludes, ' no experimental evidence against the rigorous application of Fresnel's formula'--for the reflexion of polarised light--' to the ideal case of an abrupt transition between two uniform transparent media.' Professor Dewar has, during the year, continued his experiments on the liquefaction of oxygen and nitrogen on a large scale. To a physicist perhaps the most important results of the research are the discovery of the magnetic properties of liquid oxygen, and the proof of the fact that the resistance of certain pure metals vanishes at absolute zero.5 The last discovery is borne out by Griffiths and Oallendar's experiments with their platinum thermometers." Mr. Williams's article on 'The Relation of the Dimensions of Physical Quantities to Directions in Space'7 has led to an interesting discussion. Some of his deductions will be noticed later. The title-page of the first edition of Maxwell's 'Electricity and Magnetism' bears the date 1873. This year, 1893, we welcome a third edition, edited by Maxwell's distinguished successor, and enriched by a supplementary volume, in which Professor J. J. Thomson describes some of the advances made by electrical science in the last twenty years. The subject matter of this volume might well serve as a text for a Presidential Address. The choice of a subject on which to speak to-day has been no easy task. The fiel...