Christiaan Huygens was a brilliant Dutch mathematician, physicist, and astronomer who lived during the seventeenth century, a period sometimes referred to as the Scientific Revolution. Huygens, a highly gifted theoretical and experimental scientist, is best known for his work on the theories of centrifugal force, the wave theory of light, and the pendulum clock.At an early age, Huygens began work in advanced mathematics by attempting to disprove several theories established by the ancient Greeks in simple geometry. He was also very interested in astronomy and telescopes and spent a considerable amount of time devising methods to improve both the optical and mechanical performance of the telescope. His achievements in astronomy were reported in his 1659 book entitled Systema Saturnium, in which he noted his discovery of the rings encircling the planet Saturn as well as his observations about the moon, the planets, and the Orion nebula.In 1690 Huygens returned to Holland where he published a book started in 1687 on the physics of light entitled Traité de la Lumière, in which he suggested a theory to explain the wave-like nature of light. Huygens was unconvinced by the particle theory of light advanced by Newton, primarily because he thought the rapid speed of light would only be possible if light were composed of waves.He suggested that light waves traveled on an invisible "ether" that filled the void throughout air and space. In his famous "Huygens' Principle", he suggested that each point in a light wave could be explained by miniature wavelets that combined to form a wavefront. Huygens' theories neatly explained the laws of refraction, diffraction, interference, and reflection and he went on to make major advances in the theories concerning the phenomena of double refraction (birefringence) and polarization of light.Huygens' work in the fields of mathematics and physics led to significant steps forward in the advancement of science, particularly the fields of optics, astronomy, and mechanical physics. Near the beginning of the eighteenth century, Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens proposed that each point in a wave of light can be thought of as an individual source of illumination that produces its own spherical wavelets, which all add together to form an advancing wavefront. This interactive Java tutorial is designed to illustrate the reflection and refraction of light according to the multiple wavelet concept, now known as the Huygens' principle.
click here to see reflection and refraction
