When.com Web Search

Search results

  1. Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
  2. Bedford Level experiment - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Level_experiment

    The Old Bedford River, photographed from the bridge at Welney, Norfolk (2008); the camera is looking downstream, south-west of the bridge. The Bedford Level experiment was a series of observations carried out along a 6-mile (10 km) length of the Old Bedford River on the Bedford Level of the Cambridgeshire Fens in the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries to deny the curvature ...

  3. Empirical evidence for the spherical shape of Earth - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_evidence_for_the...

    Refraction can give the impression that Earth's surface is flat, curved more convexly than it is, or even that it is concave (this is what happened in various trials of the Bedford Level experiment). The phenomenon of variable atmospheric bending can be seen when distant objects appear to be broken into pieces or even turned upside down.

  4. Atmospheric refraction - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_refraction

    Diagram showing displacement of the Sun's image at sunrise and sunset Comparison of inferior and superior mirages due to differing air refractive indices, n. Atmospheric refraction is the deviation of light or other electromagnetic wave from a straight line as it passes through the atmosphere due to the variation in air density as a function of height. [1]

  5. Horizon - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon

    where h is the observer's height above the Earth, μ is the index of refraction of air at the observer's height, and μ 0 is the index of refraction of air at Earth's surface. The refraction must be found by integration of = ⁡, where is the angle between the ray and a line through the center of the Earth.

  6. Spherical Earth - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth

    Image from space: The curved surface of the spherical planet Earth. Spherical Earth or Earth's curvature refers to the approximation of the figure of the Earth to a sphere.The concept of a spherical Earth gradually displaced earlier beliefs in a flat Earth during classical antiquity and the Middle Ages.

  7. Angle of incidence (optics) - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_incidence_(optics)

    When dealing with a beam that is nearly parallel to a surface, it is sometimes more useful to refer to the angle between the beam and the surface tangent, rather than that between the beam and the surface normal. The 90-degree complement to the angle of incidence is called the grazing angle or glancing angle. Incidence at small grazing angles ...

  8. Refraction - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refraction

    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 waves and water waves also experience refraction. How much a wave ...

  9. Halo (optical phenomenon) - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(optical_phenomenon)

    Analogous refraction demonstration experiment for the circumzenithal arc. [9] Here, it is mistakenly labelled as an artificial rainbow in Gilberts book. [10] This approach employs the fact that in some cases the average geometry of refraction through an ice crystal may be imitated / mimicked via the refraction through another geometrical object.