XII. Colours in metal glasses and in metallic films

Abstract The present paper contains a discussion of some optical properties of a medium containing minute metal spheres. The discussion is divided into two Parts: the first Part dealing with colours in metal glasses, in which the proportion of volume occupied by metal is small; the second Part dealing with metal films, in which this proportion may have any value from zero to unity. In Part I. the observations of Siedentopf and Zsigmondy beyond the limit of microscopic vision (‘Ann. der Phys.,’ January, 1903) are discussed. It is shown that the particles seen in a gold ruby glass are particles of gold which, when their diameters are less than 0.1μ, are accurately spherical. I have endeavoured to show that the presence of many of these minute spheres to a wave-length of light in the glass will account for all the optical properties of “regular” gold ruby glass, and that the irregularities in colour and in polarisation effects sometimes exhibited by gold glass are due to excessive distance between consecutive gold particles or to excessive size of such particles, the latter, however, involving the former. It is also shown that the radiation from radium is capable of producing in gold glass the ruby colour which is generally produced by re-heating. The method adopted enables us to predict from a knowledge of the metal present in metallic form in a glass what colour that glass will be in its “regular” state.