CHAPTER XXI.
MAGNETIC ACTION ON LIGHT.
806.] The most important step in establishing a relation between electric and magnetic phenomena and those of light must be the discovery of some instance in which the one set of phenomena is affected by the other. In the search for such phenomena we must be guided by any knowledge we may have already obtained with respect to the mathematical or geometrical form of the quantities which we wish to compare. Thus, if we endeavour, as Mrs. Somerville did, to magnetize a needle by means of light, we must remember that the distinction between magnetic north and south is a mere matter of direction, and would be at once reversed if we reverse certain conventions about the use of mathematical signs. There is nothing in magnetism analogous to those phenomena of electrolysis which enable us to distinguish positive from negative electricity, by observing that oxygen appears at one pole of a cell and hydrogen at the other.
Hence we must not expect that if we make light fall on one end of a needle, that end will become a pole of a certain name, for the two poles do not differ as light does from darkness.
We might expect a better result if we caused circularly polarized light to fall on the needle, right-handed light failing on one end and left-handed on the other, for in some respects these kinds of light may be said to be related to each other in the same way as the poles of a magnet. The analogy, however, is faulty even here, for the two rays when combined do not neutralize each other, but produce a plane polarized ray,
Faraday, who was acquainted with the method of studying the strains produced in transparent solids by means of polarized light, made many experiments in hopes of detecting some action on polarized light while passing through a medium in which electrolytic conduction or dielectric induction exists[1]. He was not, however,
- ↑ Experimental Researches, 951–954 and 2216–2220.
