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 is the energy loss in total internal reflection?
In total internal reflection light inside a dense medium reflects from the boundary to a less dense medium. Since by Snell's law there is no allowed refracted ray, all energy continues along the ...
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Complex part of second-order susceptibility in nonlinear optics
In optics, the absorption of photons by a material can be described by considering the material's susceptibility. For linear absorption (involving a single photon), we think about the imaginary part ...
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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 is Curvature of eye lens?
I wanted to know what do we mean by "curvature of eye lens", is it the reciprocal of $r$ i.e $c=1/r$ or is it synonymous to radius of curvature of the eye lens. Moreover how does aperture relate to ...
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How is light trajectory affected by the trajectory of environment it passes through?
There's a sci-fi concept of slow light that I find very amazing:
Imagine a glass material that has index of refraction $n$ say, $3,000,000,000$ which means:
$$v_{glass} = \frac{c_{vacuum}}{n} = 0....
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Does the intensity of blackbody radiation depend on the speed of light in the medium?
In 1863, in “ON THE CONCENTRATION OF RAYS OF HEAT AND LIGHT, AND ON THE LIMITS OF ITS ACTION”, Clausius wrote in the conclusion:
To harmonize the effects of ordinary radiation, without concentration, ...
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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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Mathematical approaches to atmospheric refraction
Understanding atmospheric refraction, particularly of ultraviolet, and into the blue part of the visible spectrum is of great interest to me. Although, I have a strong background in trigonometry and ...
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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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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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Prism deviation angle for small angles
Consider the following scheme for monochromatic light refracting through a prism, with the deviation angle $\delta$:
Let $\theta_1\ \wedge\ \alpha\ll1$ . ...
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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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Time lag between observed electrical field and polarity of light?
I was listening to the Feynman lectures on physics Vol. 3, Ch.2 the other day, and he was talking about the relationship between light polarity and the electric field of light as it is transmitting ...
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What is aperture of a lens?
I read that aperture of a lens is the surface from which refraction takes place and it is represented by the diameter of the lens.
So, by saying that the aperture refers to the surface from which ...
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What is the upper bound for the index of refraction of space?
It seems that gravitational waves and gamma waves travail at about the same speed, arriving within seconds of each other over distances in the ranges of $10^6$LY. Naively, I would assume this caps the ...
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