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Snell's law (also known as the Snell–Descartes law, the ibn-Sahl law, [1] and the law of refraction) is a formula used to describe the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction, when referring to light or other waves passing through a boundary between two different isotropic media, such as water, glass, or air.
Snell's window (also called Snell's circle [1] or optical man-hole [2]) is a phenomenon by which an underwater viewer sees everything above the surface through a cone of light of width of about 96 degrees. [3] This phenomenon is caused by refraction of light entering water, and is governed by Snell's Law. [4]
If the ratio of lengths / is kept equal to / then the rays satisfy the law of sines, or Snell's law. The inner hypotenuse of the right-angled triangle shows the path of an incident ray and the outer hypotenuse shows an extension of the path of the refracted ray if the incident ray met a change of medium whose face is vertical at the point where ...
For equal permeabilities (e.g., non-magnetic media), if θ i and θ t are complementary, we can substitute sin θ t for cos θ i, and sin θ i for cos θ t, so that the numerator in equation becomes n 2 sin θ t − n 1 sin θ i, which is zero (by Snell's law).
That's because light is the usual application. Sound diffracts so much that Snell's law is seldom a useful approximation to sound wave behavior. If you have other applications, or relevant sources, please do bring them up. Dicklyon 14:58, 16 April 2007 (UTC) Snell's law is very important in the study of underwater sound.
Seismic refraction is a geophysical principle governed by Snell's Law of refraction. The seismic refraction method utilizes the refraction of seismic waves by rock or soil layers to characterize the subsurface geologic conditions and geologic structure .
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Due to Snell's law, the numerical aperture remains the same: NA = n 1 sin θ 1 = n 2 sin θ 2. In optics , the numerical aperture ( NA ) of an optical system is a dimensionless number that characterizes the range of angles over which the system can accept or emit light.