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Snell's law. Refraction of light at the interface between two media of different refractive indices, with n 2 > n 1. Since the velocity is lower in the second medium (v 2 < v 1), the angle of refraction θ 2 is less than the angle of incidence θ 1; that is, the ray in the higher-index medium is closer to the normal.
Reflection is 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. Common examples include the reflection of light, sound and water waves. The law of reflection says that for specular reflection (for example at a mirror) the angle at which the ...
Refraction. A ray of light being refracted in a plastic block. In physics, refraction is the redirection of a wave as it passes from one medium to another. The redirection can be caused by the wave's change in speed or by a change in the medium. [1] Refraction of light is the most commonly observed phenomenon, but other waves such as sound ...
Fresnel equations. Partial transmission and reflection of a pulse travelling from a low to a high refractive index medium. At near-grazing incidence, media interfaces appear mirror-like especially due to reflection of the s polarization, despite being poor reflectors at normal incidence. Polarized sunglasses block the s polarization, greatly ...
For flat mirrors, the law of reflection implies that images of objects are upright and the same distance behind the mirror as the objects are in front of the mirror. The image size is the same as the object size. (The magnification of a flat mirror is equal to one.) The law also implies that mirror images are parity inverted, which is perceived ...
In optics, the refractive index (or refraction index) of an optical medium is a dimensionless number that gives the indication of the light bending ability of that medium. The refractive index determines how much the path of light is bent, or refracted, when entering a material. This is described by Snell's law of refraction, n1 sin θ1 = n2 ...
He used this law to compute optimum shapes for lenses and curved mirrors. In the early 11th century, Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) wrote the Book of Optics (Kitab al-manazir) in which he explored reflection and refraction and proposed a new system for explaining vision and light based on observation and experiment. [11]
Hero of Alexandria, in his Catoptrics (1st century CE), showed that the ordinary law of reflection off a plane surface follows from the premise that the total length of the ray path is a minimum. [35] Ibn al-Haytham, an 11th-century polymath later extended this principle to refraction, hence giving an early version of the Fermat's principle ...