Questions tagged [refraction]
Change in the direction of propagation of a wave when its transmitting medium changes. The tag does also apply to index of refraction.
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Do neutrinos refract?
The most benign of interactions is refraction. While neutrinos rarely interact with matter in a sense like the photoelectric effect, does that mean that they don't refract either?
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Why does light change direction when it travels through glass?
This was explained to me many years ago, by a physics teacher, with the following analogy:
"If someone on the beach wants to reach someone else that is in the water, they will try to travel as much ...
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Do colors differ in terms of speed? [duplicate]
Here is a very simple question about light. As far as I remember from the school program, each color is merely one of the frequencies of light. I also remember that each color's wave length is ...
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Why is not everything transparent? [duplicate]
There is a related question on this site here: Why glass is transparent? Which explains that glass is transparent because the atoms in glass have very large energy differences between energy levels ...
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Would there be one rainbow, a double rainbow or bisecting rainbow on a planet with two suns?
I'm just curious if binary stars are low over the horizon and the conditions are just perfect for the formation of rainbow, would I see a single rainbow, double rainbow or two rainbows intersecting ...
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Why can I see the top of objects in a reflection when they are not facing the reflective surface?
Why am I able to see the top of the pictures even though they aren’t facing the reflexive surface.
The light would have to travel down through the picture
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What happens if light/particles exceeded the speed of light for a particular medium?
While the speed of light in vacuum is a universal constant ($c$), the speed at which light propagates in other materials/mediums may be less than $c$. This is obviously suggested by the fact that ...
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To what extent can speed of light be reduced? [duplicate]
Light slows down upon entering different transparent objects, and the ratio is taken as refractive index of the object. If light can be slowed down, then is there a limit up to which it can be slowed ...
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Reverse of diffraction
Can we arrange a practical in such a way that the dark and bright bands in diffraction grating be allowed to pass through the same slit to get the original light (i.e the incident light before ...
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Why does red light travel faster than blue light?
I know that light of all frequencies travel at the same speed in vacuum.
But I wonder why their speed differ in any other medium, why does red light travel faster if it has less energy than blue ...
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Can you actually stand inside a rainbow? I see people claiming you can
I have been thinking about this for ages and it has been driving me crazy. I was convinced that rainbows are always complete circles that appear to be arcs because they cross the horizon. Then, I saw ...
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Why are red and blue light refracted differently if they travel at the same speed in the same medium?
When I look at Snell's law
$\frac{\sin\theta_2}{\sin\theta_1} = \frac{v_2}{v_1} = \frac{n_1}{n_2}$
I don't see any reference to wavelength.
If red and blue have the same speed in the same medium, why ...
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Why color depends on frequency and not on wavelength? [duplicate]
To explain my question lets consider this example:
The wavelength of light in a medium is $\lambda=\lambda_{0}/\mu$, where $\lambda_{0}$ is the wavelength in vacuum. A beam of red light ($\lambda_{0}=...
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Is true black possible?
Black is the absence of light because it absorbs light, but when we create black paint or black objects, light is always reflected, either in all directions in matte or smoothly in shiny black objects,...
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Which of these theories on why light slows in media are true?
This question is similar to previously asked questions, but the responses to them are confusing and I think it may be better covered by listing out all the potential answers for clarity.
It's a ...
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