Questions tagged [reflection]
This tag is for questions relating to reflection, the change in direction of a wavefront at an interface between two different media so that the wavefront returns into the medium from which it originated. A familiar example of reflection comes from water waves; as the waves travel they reflect off objects that are floating in the water, and also reflect off the walls of the container holding the water.
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Images formed by a pair of plane mirrors
I've been taught that if a point-sized object is placed between two plane mirrors at an angle theta with each other, then the number of images formed is $360^{\circ}/\theta$ or $360^{\circ}/\theta - 1$...
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Explanation for possible interference on a home mirror?
I've noticed that a few peculiar things about home commercial mirrors that aren't present with industrial/scientific mirrors.
This is one of the mirrors I used.
With the mirror like the one above, ...
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Are there yet Optical Magnetic Mirrors (OMMs) which reflect via interaction with the magnetic field?
update 2021: As the question has remained unanswered for five years and the field of optical metamaterials has advanced, I think this question can be revisited.
The most familiar mirror relies on ...
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Explaining phase shift from a half-silvered mirror
I am trying to understand why light undergoes a phase shift when reflecting off one side of a half-silvered mirror, but not the other side.
This Wikipedia page and this answer both give the following ...
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What causes materials like Vantablack to have their high optical absorption properties?
As per the title of this post. From reading, I understand that blackbody radiation is a factor I should consider here, with light being absorbed and converted to heat etc.
However, what I want to ...
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What causes this circular reflection to form?
Holed up at home, I was distracting myself by shining my green laser pointer around. Something particularly interesting happened when I pointed the laser at a reflective black plastic surface. The ...
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Under water light reflection of air in a cup vs water in a cup
The last time I was on vacation I was drinking on the swimming pool, and after I was finished with the drinks I started playing with the 2 plastic cups I had, and noticed that the air produces a ...
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How does a broadband dielectric Mirror work?
It is widely known that dielectric mirrors work with several layers of at least two materials which differ in refractive index that are layered, such that partially reflected waves interfere ...
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Diffusion of a particle between two immiscible liquids
I am trying to find a model, or construct my own to describe the diffusion of a particle between layers of immiscible fluids with different densities.
The particle size is much larger than the sizes ...
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Image method for room impulse response simulation
I am following this paper on simulating a room impulse response (RIR). The wave of a single frequency $\omega$ point sound source in location $X$ as it is viewed by a microphone located at $X'$ is:
$$...
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Why does the electric field and not the magnetic field remains in the same direction after reflection from a medium?
I was reading up about reflection and transmission when an electromagnetic wave is normally incident on a surface.
I came across this figure :
My question is why is the direction of electric field ...
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Focusing of a cylindrical mirror in X-ray optics
Focusing cylindrical mirror are sometimes used to squeeze a photon beam in one direction. They can be vertically focusing or horizontally focusing, and such mirrors are typically used in X-Ray optics ...
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What are the limitations on the Paraxial Approximation?
What my physics book referred to as the paraxial approximation derived to be thus:
$$\frac{1}{s}+\frac{1}{s'}=\frac{2}{R}$$
as a way of showing that in a concave spherical mirror, all reflected rays ...
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What would be the best material to reflect radio waves?
From what I could gather after a quick search on the internet, it would seem that any material can reflect or absorb RF waves but thickness matters. It's obvious that most parabolic dishes are made ...
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What are the Fresnel formulas for acoustics?
While it's not too difficult to derive Snell's Law for acoustics e.g. from Huygen's principle like for light, I find surprisingly little resources on an equivalent to Fresnel formulas linking the ...
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