Skip to main content

WHY SHOULD LIGHT BEND?


     put a spoon in a glass which is half filled with water.  The spoon looks bent, because light traveling from air to water is bent(refracted).  why should light refract?
     When light waves travel in a denser medium like water and glass, its slows down.  like we slow down, when we move into a knee deep water. 
     If all the light waves travels straight(perpendicular to the line of separation of two media) and enter the denser medium, the wave speed will decrease, but they will go undeviated.
     But if the waves enter the line of separation at an angle(obliquely), part of the first wave front will enter the denser medium and"that part" will be slowed down; remaining part will move with original speed in the first medium.  This process causes the wavefront to bend.  similarly all the waves that follow will bend (when they enter) and follow a different path in the denser medium.
     Without refraction of light,   lenses, prism, microscope, telescope and other optical devices are not possible.

     Note:  The second medium, the waves' speed will change and hence wavelength will change.  But the frequency can not change.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

DISORDER IS THE "ORDER OF THE DAY"

         Imagine a balloon full of air.  The air molecules are moving randomly inside the balloon.  Let us pierce the balloon with a pin.  The air rushes out.  Why should not the air molecules stay inside the balloon safely and ignore the little hole?  That is not the way the world works.  The molecules always "want to occupy as many states as possible".  Hence the air goes out in the open to occupy more volume.   The things always goes into disorder (entropy) and the disorder increases with time.  The above statement is what we call "second law of thermodynamics".      Consider a cup of coffee on the table. Suppose the heat from entire room flows to your cup of coffee, the coffee will boil and the rest of the room will freeze.  Freezing means bringing things to order and arrangement.  It violates the second law.  Hence it will never happen.  Hence heat must flow from high ...

THE EARTH, A SUPER ORGANISM

     JOIN MY COURSE: "Become a programmer in a day with python"       A man called 'love lock' (what a name) proposed a theory called Gaia theory, named after Greek Goddess.      It says, "Earth is a self-regulating organism like a human being.  The organic life in it interacts with in-organic matter and maintains atmosphere, temperature and environment".  Hence the earth is still suitable for the life to thrive.      Imagine, in a particular place, there are lot of flowers.  Some flowers are white and some are darkly coloured.  We know, white reflects light and heat while dark absorbs the same.  White flowers can thrive in hot climate.  But dark flowers requires cold climate.  The absorption and reflection balances and the environment reaches average, warm temperature at which both the flowers can co-exist.  This is the essence of "Gaia" theory.      On our earth, ...

THE WORK HORSE "="

    One cannot think of  a mathematical step without 'is equal to ' .  It balances right hand side and left hand side.  It aids simplification and manipulation of a mathematical expression. example: 2(A+B)  = C 2A+2B  = C         2A = C-2B           A = C-2B/ 2   In an electronic calculator,  the pressing of ' = " sign executes an asthmatic expression  or simply calculates.       In computer languages, it plays very important role.                                                                 A = B   When a computer looks at this expression, the value stored in the location named B is just transferred to the storage named A .  After execution both A and B will have the same value an...