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Fresnel's rhomb

Fresnel's rhomb noun: a rhombus or oblique parallelopiped of glass cut so that a ray of light entering one of its faces at right angles shall emerge at right angles at the opposite face, after undergoing within the rhombus, at other faces, two reflections. It is used to produce a ray circularly polarized from a plane-polarized ray, or the reverse.

Noun

Fresnel's rhomb (plural Fresnel's rhombs)

  1. A rhombus or oblique parallelopiped of glass cut so that a ray of light entering one of its faces at right angles shall emerge at right angles at the opposite face, after undergoing within the rhombus, at other faces, two reflections. It is used to produce a ray circularly polarized from a plane-polarized ray, or the reverse.
    • In Fresnel’s rhomb, whatever be the colour of the light, the retardation of the phase is exactly 90°, or the corresponding retardation in space is exactly ^λ⁄₄ whatever the value of λ may be.1831, George Biddell Airy, Mathematical Tracts on the Lunar and Planetary Theories, the Figure of the Earth, Precession and Nutation, the Calculus of Variations, and the Undulatory Theory of Optics...

Forms of Fresnel's rhomb

pluralFresnel's rhombs

Origin of Fresnel's rhomb

Designed in 1817 by Augustin-Jean Fresnel.

Questions about Fresnel's rhomb

What does Fresnel's rhomb mean?
Fresnel's rhomb means a rhombus or oblique parallelopiped of glass cut so that a ray of light entering one of its faces at right angles shall emerge at right angles at the opposite face, after undergoing within the rhombus, at other faces, two reflections. It is used to produce a ray circularly polarized from a plane-polarized ray, or the reverse.
What part of speech is Fresnel's rhomb?
Fresnel's rhomb is a noun.
What is the plural of Fresnel's rhomb?
The plural of Fresnel's rhomb is Fresnel's rhombs.

Words near Fresnel's rhomb in the dictionary

  1. Fresnel rhombs
  2. Fresnel spot
  3. Fresnel spots
  4. Fresnel zone plate
  5. Fresnel zone plates
  6. Fresnel's rhomb
  7. Fresnel's rhombs
  8. fresnels
  9. Fresnes
  10. Fresno
  11. Fresno County

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Fresnel's rhomb (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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