El Refractòmetre d'Abbe, una eina important en la recerca i en la indústria : estudi d'un exemplar de principis del segle XX

Resum

Along the XIXth century there were great advances in the astronomy and the microscopy fields thanks to the improvements in the image quality obtained through the objectives of the telescopes and microscopes. This improvement was accomplished by the suitable combination of lenses with different refraction index reaching the correction of optical aberrations. In all this process it was essential to measure with precision the refraction index. Ernst Abbe in 1872 design his first model of refractometer based on the measure of the limit angle. The great advantage of his instrument was the simplicity of the design, the compactness, the good precision and the reduced size which was able to be a portable device. In this work a description, a study and analysis, including measurements, of an Abbe refractometer from the beginning of the XXth century are made.