The extra-ordinary ray is transmitted with little absorption, and there-fore tourmaline is one of our means of getting a beam of com-pletely polarized light. With two plates of tourmaline a veryinteresting phenomenon can be shown, whose explanation issi tuple in terms of transverse waves, but would… … Figure 111 BIAXIAL CRYSTALS 217 half as bright as when seen directly, for of course half the lightis absorbed as ordinary waves, and there is also some generalabsorption and loss by reflection. But if one of the plates beturned through 90° about the beam of light as axis, nothing atall can be seen…
Light
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