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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Fermat principle: how did they know the speed of light in different mediums?
Pierre de Fermat derived his principle of least time by considering the path that light would take when traveling between two points. He postulated that light would follow the path that minimized the ...
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Is there a way to calculate the angle between the refracted and reflected rays given the refractive index?
Is there a way to calculate the refracted and reflected rays? I know we use Snell's law to calculate the refracted rays, but is there a formula to calculate the angle of the reflected rays, or does it ...
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Brewster Angle - what is the polarization state of the transmitted wave?
When unpolarized light is incident at Brewster's angle, what I understand is that the reflected wave is S-polarized. What is the polarization state of the transmitted (refracted) part of the wave?
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What causes the plane contrails to bend in the foreground of the eclipse?
This looks almost like refractive index of air is different in the shadowed part, but what would cause that?
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Apparent position of object in bowl of water
Say you have a bowl of water and you keep an object in it. What would the apparent position of an object inside the bowl from the position of an outside observer? Will the curvature of the spherical ...
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Difference between thin film interference and Bragg diffraction of electron
Thin film interference is given by:
$2d\sin\theta=n\frac{\lambda}{n_i}$,
where $d$ is the thickness of film, $\theta$ is the angle between incident light and tangent to the surface, $n$ is an integer, ...
rob♦
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Difference between deviation of ray and wavefront
This is a reference to the question posted by
Govind Prajapat Refraction of light through a slab of variable refractive index
A monochromatic light wave is incident normally on a glass slab of
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Does temperature affect the index of refraction?
I would like to know the physical reasoning behind the fact that temperature indeed does change the index of refraction of a certain medium.
(Is there an easy experiment for me to try this at home?)
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Ray tracing in a inhomogeneous media
If I have an optical transparent slab with refractive index $n$ depending on the distance $x$ from the surface of the slab, the refractive index can be described by:
$$n(x)=f(x)$$ where $f(x)$ is a ...
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Intrinsic impedance of a medium
I am trying to understand what the intrinsic impedance of a medium means. I understand the mathematical definition of it, but it doesn't speak much about the concept to me.
What does intrinsic ...
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QFT view of lower light speed of light in medium [duplicate]
In classical EM theory, if we have a medium whose dielectric coefficient is independent of wavelengths (suppose we filter the incoming signal to a certain frequency band), then the waveform gets to ...
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Relationship between the power of a convex lens and the refractive index of a medium
According to the Lensmaker's formula,
$$\frac{1}{f} = (μ-1)\left(\frac{1}{R_1} - \frac{1}{R_2}\right)$$
Apparently, focal length $f$ is inversely proportional to the refractive index of the medium $μ$....
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Why the photons are deflected during the refraction? [duplicate]
From what I learnt, when photons are passing throw a denser environnement with an positive angle (from the atmosphere to water for exemple), they are slow down. But I can't understand how this ...
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Why does light bend through a different medium?
How does light going through a medium make light refract? Here’s a good picture :
The problem with this analogy is it depends on the students or light being connected to each other and as far as I ...
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Why do shockwaves refract when they travel into the ground?
If a shockwave from something like an explosion travels into the ground, why will it refract? The speed of sound is far different in the ground, but what would make it refract? I can’t seem to find ...
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