Refractive Index and dispersion of distilled water for visible radiation, at temperatures 0 to 60 degrees C

The Index of Refraction of Seawater

“…A very significant development in index of refraction determinations was the publication by Tilton and Taylor (1938) of the U.S. National Bureau of Standards, of their monumental work on the index of refraction of pure water at a large number of wavelengths and temperatures at atmospheric pressure. Al-…”

“…Fortunately, none of the studies undertaken prior to 1934 are necessary for the present purpose, and only recent measurements (after 1968) have been used to construct our tables with the one exception that the values for pure water (salinity 0°/ 00 ) were taken from Tilton and Taylor (1938) either directly or by our sources. The older data will be presented at the very end, for comparison purposes only, using our extensive tables as a reference.…”

“…Another method used in two of the studies to be mentioned later is that developed by Hallwachs (1893) which employs the same technique as the Pulfrich refractometer but in a two-container arrangement which can provide the index of a liquid relative to another liquid; in the present case the index of seawater relative to pure water. Except for one particular case, these methods are limited to measuring the index of refraction to a few units in the fifth decimal place; the one exception (Tilton and Taylor, 1938) provides it to the sixth decimal place.…”

Response to “Comment on ‘Mixture model description of the T-, P dependence of the refractive index of water’ ” [J. Chem. Phys. 115, 7795 (2001)]

“…In our recent application 1 of the liquid water mixture model developed by Robinson and co-workers 2 to the pressure and temperature dependence of the index of refraction of water, the experimental measurements of Tilton and Taylor 3 were emphasized. We agree with Harvey 4 that the valid temperature range for the smoothing equation developed by Tilton and Taylor 3 to describe their high precision refractive index data for water is 0-60°C as measured on the International Temperature Scale of 1927 ͑ITS-27͒.…”

“…We further agree with Harvey 4 that for very precise comparisons, care must be taken to compensate for the very small temperature shifts resulting from revisions in the accepted standard for the International Temperature Scale over the years. However, although Harvey 4 specifically refrains from commenting on the validity of the mixture model description of liquid water, focusing on whether the uncertainty in the Tilton and Taylor 3 data is best represented by the authors' stated value, 3 1ϫ10 Ϫ6 , or by the average standard deviation of their smoothing equation, 3 1.2ϫ10 Ϫ6 , or by a ''reasonable estimate'' of the result of a modern uncertainty analysis, 4 2 ϫ10 Ϫ6 , suggests that the mixture model analysis can be thought of as another empirical fitting function comparable to others 3,[5][6][7][8][9] in the literature. Such a conclusion loses sight of the physical motivation underlying the mixture model analysis which leads to physically meaningful fitting parameters not found in other treatments.…”