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A new incident illuminator for polarizing microscopes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2018

F. H. Smith*
Affiliation:
Vickers Instruments Ltd., Purley Way, Croydon, Surrey

Summary

The customary illumination by a ‘coverglass’ inclined at 45 degrees is replaced by a double reflection. The beam from the horizontal collimating tube is first reflected from a highly reflecting mirror at the back of the unit, then downward from a coverglass placed at the top of the unit. With this arrangement the coverglass is inclined at less than 22½ degrees to the axis of the microscope, with a similar reduction of the angle of incidence. The correction ratio for rotation by upward passage of light through the coverglass is now reduced from 6:5 to the almost negligible value 21:20. There is a corresponding improvement in the homogeneity of extinction over the microscope field.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1964, The Mineralogical Society

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References

page 726 note 1 Hallimond, A.F. and Taylor, E.W., Min. Mag., 1953, vol. 30, p. 49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 726 note 2 A.F.Hallimond, Manual of the polarizing microscope, 2nd ed., 1956, p. 99.

page 726 note 3 0.S Heavens, Optical properties of thin solid fihns, 1955, p. 240.

page 727 note 1 L. Holland, Vacuum deposition of thin film., 1956, p. 512.