Light and Color in the Outdoors
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Product Description
Review
"Minnaert's book is a gem!...It is a wonderful book that should be known by everyone who has an interest in the natural visual world." Am. J. Phys. "...just about everything imaginable that refracts or reflects light or shows color...a marvelous book, one that I highly recommend to every observer" Sky & Telescope
Product Description
All of science springs from the observation of nature. In this classic book, the late Professor Minnaert accompanies the reader on a tour of nature's light and color and reveals the myriad phenomena that may be observed outdoors with no more than a pair of eyes and an enquiring mind. From the intriguing shape of the dapples beneath a tree on a sunny day, via rainbows, mirages, and haloes, the colors of liquid, ice, and the sky, to the appearance of the sun, moon, planets, and stars - Minnaert describes and explains them all in a clear language accessible to laymen. This new English edition is supplemented by 80 plates, over half of them in color, taken by the acclaimed photographer Pekka Parviainen, illustrating many of the phenomena - ordinary and exotic - discussed in the book.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
In the shade of a group of trees the ground is dappled randomly with spots of light, some small, some large, but all regularly elliptical. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
In the shade of a group of trees the ground is dappled randomly with spots of light, some small, some large, but all regularly elliptical. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
First published in 1937, but extensively updated since and including 49 superb photographs in full colour, this book is a marvellous resource for the occasional observer of optical events. The rainbow is perhaps the most spectacular, and familiar. But you may be like me, and be astonished by the variety of other events you can look out for - alerted by Minnaert's lucid and charming writing. Moonbows, dewbows, sub-suns, green sun, blue sun, dozens of cloud-related events such as nuctilucent clouds, lots of landscape-related events such as how the yellow-green of a field of young corn when looking toward the sun, becomes bluish when looking in the opposite direction. The stripes on a freshly mown lawn that disappear when you look for them at right angles. The mirages you can see above tarmac roads. The width of bright sunlight on the horizon at sea - and what it can tell you about the waves or the curvature of the earth. All explained in plain language, with diagrams and quite often quotations from poems and other literature to add to an atmosphere of great enjoyment.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
36 of 36 people found the following review helpful
A Change-Your-Life Classic
27 Aug 2000
Format:Hardcover
This deeply perceptive book changes our own perceptions of all kinds of light and color events in the outdoors. You will never see the same way again outdoors. Some examples involve elementary optics (which explain the visual phenomena) but nearly all the 278 short chapters can be appreciated by the visually alert reader. My favorite examples include dappled light, rainbows (there are always two), and differences between relected and transmitted light in seeing leaves and grass. The Dover edition is fine; the Springer-Verlag edition is better with its excellent color photographs.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Great, great, great. Lives up to its promise.
27 Sep 1996
Format:Paperback
Had the Dover edition (still available) for years, it's wonderful. Saw the updatedhardbound edition and shelled out fifty bucks on the spot, it's even better.If you have any interest in shadows, rainbows, halos, mirages, etc. you will find this book enormously satisfying. I've never seen such a wealth of phenomena so well observed, analyzed, and described. You will see more and notice more after you read this book. What is it? It's not quite optics, not quite natural history, not quite psychophysics or perceptual psychology. Unique. Reading Jack London and wonder what sun-dogs are? Reach for this book. Reading Hersey's "The War Lover" and wonder about the glory around airplane shadows? Reach for this book.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Eye Pleasure
5 Jan 2000
Format:Hardcover
One of the most phenomenal books I've ever seen. This book describes and explains in very easily read prose, the complex visual phenomena of the natural world. It is almost a meditation on the natural world outdoors. I read it often not just as a reference. Be sure to read the introduction to the work. An excellent buy--I have purchased five copies over the years as gifts.
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