160 AD - Ptolemy and refraction Roman astronomer Ptolemy writes about the refraction of light and further develops the emission theory of vision – objects are seen by rays of light emanating from the eyes.
300 BC - First writings about reflection and refraction Greek mathematician Euclid writes Optica. He asserts that light travels in straight lines and proposes mathematical formulae for reflection and refraction.
400 BC - Emission theory of vision Greek philosopher and mathematician Plato develops the emffocusission theory of vision – we see because our eyes emit straight vision beams.
984 - Ibn Sahl and refraction Persian scientist Ibn Sahl writes on burning mirrors and lenses, which sets out his understanding of how curved mirrors and lenses bend and focus light. He discovers a law of refraction mathematically equivalent to Snell’s law (1615).
1021 - Intromissionist
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1672 - Colours explained Isaac Newton demonstrates how white light can be separated into a spectrum of colours with a prism. He develops ideas about different colours of light being absorbed, transmitted or reflected. His book Opticks is released to the public in 1704.
1678 - Wave theory Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens argues that light consists of waves and uses this theory to explain double refraction. Thomas Young’s experiments (1801) support Huygens’s wave theory.
1690-When Christian Huygens was 61 he fully published his wave theory of light ,suggest that it propagates as disturbance (spherical pressure wave)in the air .
1773-(newton had died in 1727) and provided the first the strong evidence that light was a wave.
1860 - Electromagnetic field James Clerk Maxwell explains that electricity, magnetism and light are all manifestations of the same phenomenon – the electromagnetic field.
1873-Maxwell published his 4 equations that almost completely described