Newton Corpuscular Theory of Light and Huygen's Wave Theory Flashcards
What did Newton suggest?
Light was made up of corpuscles.
His theory was based on the laws of motion of particles (travel in a straight line unless acted upon by a force).
What did Newton say about reflection?
Reflection was due to a force on the corpuscles, which changed their direction of travel.
What did he say about refraction?
It was due to particles travelling faster in optically denser mediums with higher refractive index.
Huygen’s Principle
Every point on a wave front may be considered to be a point of secondary wavelets that spread out at the speed of the wave. The new wavefront is the surface that is tangential to all secondary waves.
What did Huygen Show?
Showed that edges of the shadows of interference patterns were not perfectly sharp, therefore light must be a wave and diffract when going through an opening.
What could Huygen’s Theory Explain?
Reflection and Refraction
Why was Newton Preferred?
Explained reflection and refraction in a more intuitive way that fitted with the laws of physics more at that time. Newton also had a more respectable and reputable status than Huygen.
Newtons theory could not explain diffraction.
