Scientific Papers - Vi

430.
ON THE SCATTEEING OF LIGHT BY A CLOUD OF SIMILAR SMALL PARTICLES OF ANY SHAPE AND ORIENTED AT RANDOM.
[Philosophical Magazine, Vol. xxxv. pp. 373—381, 1918.]
FOE, distinctness of conception the material of the particles may be supposed to be uniform and non-magnetic, but of dielectric capacity different from that of the surrounding medium; at the same time the results at which we shall arrive are doubtless more general. The smallness is, of course, to be understood as relative to the wave-length of the vibrations.
When the particles are spherical, the problem is simple, as their orientation does not then enter*. If the incident light be polarized, there is no scattered ray in the direction of primary electric vibration, or if the incident light be unpolarized there is complete polarization of the light scattered at right angles to the direction of primary propagation. The consideration of elongated particles shows at once that a want of symmetry must usually entail a departure from the above law of polarization and may be one of the causes, though probably not the most important, of the incomplete polarization of sky-light at 90° from the sun. My son's recent experiments upon light scattered by carefully filtered gases f reveal a decided deficiency of polarization in the light emitted perpendicularly, and seem to call for a calculation of what is to be expected from particles of arbitrary shape.
As a preliminary to a more complete treatment, it may be well to take first the case of particles symmetrical about an axis, or at any rate behaving as if they were such, for the calculation is then a good deal simpler. We may also limit ourselves to finding the ratio of intensities of the two polarized components in the light scattered at right angles, the principal component being that which vibrates parallel to the primary vibrations, and the subordinate component (vanishing for spherical particles) being that in which
* Phil. Mag. Vol. XLI. pp. 107, 274,447 (1871), Vol. xir. p. 81 (1881), Vol. XLVII. p. 375 (1899); Scientific Papers, Vol. i. pp. 87, 104, 518, Vol. iv. p. 397.
t Roy. Soc. Proc. A, Vol. xciv. p. 453 (1918); see also A, Vol. xcv. p. 155 (1918).e rest (residue) of the latter being carefully removed, a drop of the oil was placed upon the freshly formed water-surface in a small dish by means of a brass wire previously cleaned by ignition. The oil did not really spread, but after a momentary centrifugal movement, during which several small drops were separated from it, it contracted itself in the middle of the surface, and a second drop deposited on the same vessel remained absolutely motionless." I have repeated this experiment, using oil which is believed to have come direct from Italy. A drop of this placed upon a clean water-surface at once drives dust to the boundary in forming the mono-molecular layer, and in addition flattens itself out into a disk of considerable size, which rapidly undergoes the transformations well described and figured by Devaux. The same oil, purified by means of alcohol on Miss Pockels' plan, behaves quite differently. The first spreading, driving dust to the boundary,