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    Index of Refraction

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    Andrea Law
    The document discusses the index of refraction of various materials and Snell's law. It provides the index of refraction for common materials like vacuum, air, water, ice, glass and diamond. Snell's law relates the indices of refraction between two media to the angles of propagation. It states that if light passes from a higher to lower index medium, the angle of refraction is greater than the angle of incidence, and vice versa if passing from lower to higher index medium.

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    Index of Refraction

    Uploaded by

    Andrea Law
    25 views3 pages
    The document discusses the index of refraction of various materials and Snell's law. It provides the index of refraction for common materials like vacuum, air, water, ice, glass and diamond. Snell's law relates the indices of refraction between two media to the angles of propagation. It states that if light passes from a higher to lower index medium, the angle of refraction is greater than the angle of incidence, and vice versa if passing from lower to higher index medium.

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    The document discusses the index of refraction of various materials and Snell's law. It provides the index of refraction for common materials like vacuum, air, water, ice, glass and diamond. Snell's law relates the indices of refraction between two media to the angles of propagation. It states that if light passes from a higher to lower index medium, the angle of refraction is greater than the angle of incidence, and vice versa if passing from lower to higher index medium.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    25 views3 pages

    Index of Refraction

    Uploaded by

    Andrea Law
    The document discusses the index of refraction of various materials and Snell's law. It provides the index of refraction for common materials like vacuum, air, water, ice, glass and diamond. Snell's law relates the indices of refraction between two media to the angles of propagation. It states that if light passes from a higher to lower index medium, the angle of refraction is greater than the angle of incidence, and vice versa if passing from lower to higher index medium.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 3

    I.

    Index of Refraction

    The index of refraction is defined as the speed of light in vacuum divided


    by the speed of light in the medium.

    The indices of refraction of some common substances are given below


    with a more complete description of the indices for optical glasses given
    elsewhere. The values given are approximate and do not account for the
    small variation of index with light wavelength which is called dispersion.
    Material

    Material

    Vacuum

    1.000

    Ethyl alcohol

    1.362

    Air

    1.000277

    Glycerine

    1.473

    Water

    4/3

    Ice

    1.31

    Carbon disulfide

    1.63

    Polystyrene

    1.59

    Methylene iodide

    1.74

    Crown glass

    1.50-1.62

    Diamond

    2.417

    Flint glass

    1.57-1.75

    J. Snell's Law

    Snell's Law relates the indices of refraction n of the two media to the
    directions of propagation in terms of the angles to the normal. Snell's law
    can be derived from Fermat's Principle or from the Fresnel Equations.

    If the incident medium has the larger index of refraction, then the angle
    with the normal is increased by refraction. The larger index medium is
    commonly called the "internal" medium, since air with n=1 is usually the
    surrounding or "external" medium. You can calculate the condition for
    total internal reflection by setting the refracted angle = 90 and
    calculating the incident angle. Since you can't refract the light by more
    than 90, all of it will reflect for angles of incidence greater than the angle
    which gives refraction at 90.
    Direction of bending
    When a ray of light passes from a less dense
    material (eg air) into a denser material (eg
    glass or water) it is bent away from the surface
    between the two materials. This means that in
    this situation the angle of refraction is
    always less than the angle of incidence.

    However, if the ray of light hits the surface at right angles (ie at 90) to
    the surface, the ray is not bent.

    When a ray of light passes from a denser


    material (eg water or glass) into a less dense
    material (eg air) it is bent towards the surface
    between the two materials. This means that in
    this situation the angle of refraction is
    always greater than the angle of incidence.

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