The behaviour of scattering media in fully diffused light

Abstract

The present paper is the outcome of a discussion which arose between the authors after the publication of a paper by O. Bloch and F. F. Renwick,* which dealt with the subject of the opacity of diffusing media, chiefly from the practical standpoint, and included also lengthy extracts from the Reports of a Committee of the American Society of Illuminating Engineers. On finding that we were unable to reconcile the experimental data with the theory included in the above paper, we were gradually led into the attempt to find solutions of some of the problems involved in this complex subject, starting only with the indisputable fact that when light falls upon a finite thickness of a scattering medium, part is rejected, part extinguished, and part transmitted. In the present communication we have confined ourselves to a study of the action of such media upon light which is assumed to be already completely diffused.