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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What really causes light/photons to appear slower in media?
I know that if we solve the Maxwell equation, we will end up with the phase velocity of light being related to the permeability and the permittivity of the material. But this is not what I'm ...
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What is the mechanism behind the slowdown of light/photons in a transparent medium?
So light travels slower in glass (for example) than in a vacuum. What causes light to slow down? Or: How does it slow down? If light passes through the medium, is it not essentially traveling in the "...
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Why do prisms work (why is refraction frequency dependent)?
It is well known that a prism can "split light" by separating different frequencies of light:
Many sources state that the reason this happens is that the index of refraction is different for ...
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How are classical optics phenomena explained in QED (Snell's law)?
How is the following classical optics phenomenon explained in quantum electrodynamics?
Reflection and Refraction
Are they simply due to photons being absorbed and re-emitted? How do we get to Snell'...
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Do photons have acceleration?
Photons travel at the fastest speed in our universe, the speed of light.
Do photons have acceleration?
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What determines color -- wavelength or frequency?
What determines the color of light -- is it the wavelength of the light or the frequency?
(i.e. If you put light through a medium other than air, in order to keep its color the same, which one would ...
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How does light speed up after coming out of a glass slab?
As I learned today in school, my teacher told me that when light enters a glass slab it slows down due to the change in density and it speeds up as it goes out of the glass slab. This causes a lateral ...
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Why doesn't the frequency of light change during refraction?
When light passes from one medium to another its velocity and wavelength change. Why doesn't frequency change in this phenomenon?
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Why one should follow Snell's law for shortest time?
whenever two media and two velocities are involved, one must follow Snell's law if one wants to take the shortest time.
Why snells law must be followed to travel diffrent media in shortest time?
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user102917
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Virtual vs Real image
I'm doing magnification and lens in class currently, and I really don't get why virtual and real images are called what they are.
A virtual image occurs the object is less than the focal length of ...
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How does a one-sided glass work?
How does a one-sided glass work? If seen from the outer side, we can see through thinking it is transparent, while if seen from the inside, the glass acts as a mirror. How?
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Why does wavelength change as light enters a different medium?
When light waves enter a medium of higher refractive index than the previous, why is it that:
Its wavelength decreases?
The frequency of it has to stay the same?
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Looking for the actual reason of refraction explained precisely without analogies
I'm a high school teacher trying to teach my students (15year olds) about refraction. I've seen a lot of good analogies to explain why the light changes direction, like the marching band analogy, that ...
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Why does the refractive index depend on wavelength? [duplicate]
Why do different wavelength get impeded more or less when in different materials? Moving with the same speed, but a longer physical distance would imply that the fields oscillate less times in the ...
user24082
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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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