Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vvkck Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T06:12:18.534Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - A historical review of optical activity phenomena

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2009

Laurence D. Barron
Laurence D. Barron
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
Get access

Summary

Yet each in itself – this was the uncanny, the antiorganic, the life-denying character of them all – each of them was absolutely symmetrical, icily regular in form. They were too regular, as substance adapted to life never was to this degree – the living principle shuddered at this perfect precision, found it deathly, the very marrow of death – Hans Castorp felt he understood now the reason why the builders of antiquity purposely and secretly introduced minute variations from absolute symmetry in their columnar structures.

Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain)

Introduction

In the Preface, an optical activity phenomenon was defined as one whose origin may be reduced to a different response of a system to right- and left-circularly polarized light. This first chapter provides a review, from a historical perspective, of the main features of a range of phenomena that can be classified as manifestations of optical activity, together with a few effects that are related but are not strictly examples of optical activity. The reader is referred to the splendid books by Lowry (1935), Partington (1953) and Mason (1982) for further historical details.

The symbols and units employed in this review are those encountered in the earlier literature, which uses CGS units almost exclusively; but these are not necessarily the same as those used in the rest of the book in which the theory of many of the phenomena included in the review are developed in detail from the unified viewpoint of the molecular scattering of polarized light.

Type
Chapter
Information
Molecular Light Scattering and Optical Activity , pp. 1 - 52
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×