![]() ![]() That is, this work is not a geometric discussion of catoptrics or dioptrics, the traditional subjects of reflection of light by mirrors of different shapes and the exploration of how light is "bent" as it passes from one medium, such as air, into another, such as water or glass. Opticks is largely a record of experiments and the deductions made from them, covering a wide range of topics in what was later to be known as physical optics. The publication of Opticks represented a major contribution to science, different from but in some ways rivalling the Principia. Newton's name did not appear on the title page of the first edition of Opticks. ![]() Opticks was Newton's second major book on physical science and it is considered one of the three major works on optics during the Scientific Revolution (alongside Kepler's Astronomiae Pars Optica and Huygens' Traité de la Lumière). The book analyzes the fundamental nature of light by means of the refraction of light with prisms and lenses, the diffraction of light by closely spaced sheets of glass, and the behaviour of color mixtures with spectral lights or pigment powders. Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light is a book by English natural philosopher Isaac Newton that was published in English in 1704 (a scholarly Latin translation appeared in 1706). ![]()
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