Abstract
This chapter discusses refractive index and the electrical permittivity. The simplest molecules are the atoms of the inert gases. Their positive nuclei are surrounded by spherical electron clouds. The symmetry of the electron cloud is such that its electrical center coincides with the nucleus; this means that the molecule will have precisely zero dipole moment. It is the mobility of its electron cloud that allows an inert gas atom to respond to an electric field. Relative to the positive nucleus, it will tend to move in the opposite direction from the field; the cloud becomes distorted and its center no longer coincides with the positive nucleus and therefore, an effective dipole moment is induced by the field in the molecule. The degree of distortion will be proportional to d and will be proportional to the effective field E eff in which the molecule finds itself. An electric field can be characterized by two factors: (1) its strength, that is, the force exerted by it on one unit of electric charge and (2) its direction, which, at any point, is the direction in which a small positive charge would move in the field. Having magnitude and direction, the field is properly represented as a vector quantity.
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