Luis Marquez
Physics 211 F10
Actual PhysicsPhysics 211 F10
The one thing that was almost forgotten was what refraction really is. Sure, the index of refraction serves a purpose, but what is refraction itself? It is essentially a surface phenomenon that is controlled by both the conservation of energy and the conservation of momentum. At the edge between the two mediums,
http://sciencelearn.org.nz/var/sciencelearn/storage/images/contexts/light-and-sight/sci-media/images/refraction-of-light-in-water/685295-1-eng-NZ/Refraction-of-light-in-water.jpg
the phase velocity is
changed, which then causes the light to change direction.
The phase velocity is the rate that a
wave spreads out into a space. The change in
velocity can be thought of the photons interacting with
different particles within the medium, hence the index of
refraction of 1 for a vacuum, which has no particles for the photons to interact with.
Additionally, different wavelengths interact
differently within the same medium, which is how prisms
work: the different wavelengths gets slowed down by different factors, so the high
frequencies get bent more than the lower
frequencies:
