Illustration and detection of inclined and horizontal dispersion in biaxial crystals

Extract

As it is not always easy to obtain for the use of students suitable specimens of crystals which exhibit inclined or horizontal dispersion of the mean lines to a marked extent, a ready method of artificially producing optic pictures which show the appearances characteristic of these dispersions may be found of service by teachers.

It is ohvious that, if the optic picture of an ordinary biaxial crystal is viewed or projected through a prism whose refracting edge is either parallel or perpendicular to the axial plane of the crystal, the dispersion produced by the prism will displace the components of the optic picture due to the various colours of the spectrum through distances increasing from red to violet, and will thus reproduce the phenomena of horizontal and inclined dispersion respectively.