For some time past I have felt the need of a text-book on Geometrical Optics with a suitable collection of examples for students preparing for Part I of the Mathematical Tripos. This book has been prepared to meet this need.It is not desirable that a text-book on the theory of a subject should attempt to convey to students such practical knowledge as they ought to gain by experience in a laboratory, and this book therefore contains only so much account of experiments as may perhaps stimulate students to try for themselves.The formulae for successive refractions and for series of lenses have been expressed in terms of distances rather than inclinations, such being simpler for beginners. Experience has shewn me that there is less mental confusion and liability to error when only one direction is regarded as the positive direction, rather than when the positive direction changes sense at each passage through a lens; I have therefore adopted the former method.The book contains a somewhat wider range than the present schedule for Part I of the Tripos.It is hardly to be hoped that a book written and seen through the press during considerable pressure of other work will prove to be free from errors, and I shall be grateful to anyone who will point them out.
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