Snell’s Law
Snell’s law provides the degree or extent of refraction that occurs through a relationship between the incident angle, refracted angles, and the refractive indices of a given pair of media.
According to Snell’s law, the ratio of the sine of the incident angle to the sine of the refracted angle is a constant, for any light of a given color or for any given pair of media. The constant value is called the refractive index of the second medium with respect to the first.
Snell’s Law is given by the relation,
or
where,
- i and r are the angle of incidence and refraction,
- n is the refractive index and n1 and n2 are the refractive indices of medium 1 and 2, and
- v1 and v2 are the speed of light in medium 1 and 2 respectively.
Refraction of Light
Refraction is an important term used in the Ray Optics branch of Physics. Refraction of light is defined as the change in direction or the bending of a wave passing from one medium to another due to the change in speed of the wave. Some natural phenomena occurring in nature where refraction of light takes place are the twinkling of stars, the formation of mirages and Rainbows, Optical illusions, and many more. The major cause of refraction to occur is the change in the speed of waves in different mediums, which is different due to the difference between the densities of the mediums. e.g. the speed of light in a vacuum is maximum. Snell’s Law provides a quantitative description of the amount of bending of a wave, that depends on the refractive index of the two mediums. Let’s learn more about refraction like the Laws of Refractions, Causes of Refraction, Types of Refraction, Examples, and Applications of Refractions in the article below.
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