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Reflection and Refraction Unit 13 When you shine a beam of light on a mirror, the light doesn’t travel through the mirror, but is returned by the mirror’s surface back into the air. When sound waves strike a canyon wall, they return to you as an echo. In these situations, waves remain in one medium rather than entering a new medium. These waves are reflected. In other situations, as when light passes from air into water, waves travel from one medium into another. When waves strike the surface of a medium at an angle, their direction changes as they enter the second medium. These waves are refracted. This is evident when a pencil in a glass of water appears to be bent. Reflection When a wave reaches a boundary between two media, some or all of the wave bounces back into the first medium. This is reflection. Waves can be totally reflected or partially reflected. Incident rays and reflected rays make equal angles with a line perpendicular to the surface, called the normal. The angle made by the incident ray and the normal, called the angle of incidence, is equal to the angle made by the reflected ray and the normal, called the angle of reflection. Angle of incidence = angle of reflection This relationship is called the law of reflection. NORMAL INCIDENT RAY Angle of incidence Angle of reflection MIRROR REFLECTED RAY Consider a candle flame placed in front of a plane (flat) mirror. Rays of light are reflected from the mirror surface in all directions. The number of rays is infinite, and every one obeys the law of reflection. Note that the rays diverge (spread apart) from the tip of the flame, and continue diverging from the mirror upon reflection. These divergent rays appear to originate from a point located behind the mirror. So you see an image of the candle in the mirror (actually behind the mirror). The image is called a virtual image, because light does not actually start there. For reflection in a plane mirror, object size equal image size and object distance equals image distance. The virtual image formed by a convex mirror (a mirror that curves outward) is smaller and closer to the mirror than the object is. When the object is close to a concave mirror (a mirror that curves inward), the virtual image is larger and farther away than the object is. When light is incident on a rough surface, it is reflected in many directions. This is diffuse reflection. Although the reflection of each single ray obeys the law of reflection, the many different angles that incident light rays encounter cause reflection in many directions. Rays of light incident on this page encounters millions of tiny flat surfaces facing in all directions, so they are reflected in all directions. This is very nice, for it allows us to read the page from any direction or position. We see most of the things around us by diffuse reflection. An echo is reflected sound. The fraction of sound energy reflected from a surface is more when the surface is rigid and smooth, and less when the surface is soft and irregular. Designers of interiors of buildings need to understand the reflective properties of surfaces. The study of these properties is acoustics. When the walls of a room are too reflective, the sound becomes garbled. This is due to multiple reflections called reverberations. But when the reflective surfaces are more absorbent, the sound level is lower, and the hall sounds dull and lifeless. Reflection of sound in a room makes is sound lively and full, as you have probably found out while singing in the shower. The walls of concert halls are often designed with grooves so that the sound waves are diffused. In this way a person in the audience receives a small amount of reflected sound from many parts of the wall. Both sound and light obey the law of reflection. Refraction Sound waves are refracted when parts of a wave front travels at different speeds. This happens in uneven winds or when sound is traveling through air of uneven temperature. On a warm day, for example, the air near the ground may be appreciably warmer than the air above. Since sound travels faster in warm air, the speed of sound near the ground is increased. The refraction is not abrupt but gradual. Sound waves therefore tend to bend away from the warm ground, making it appear that the sound does not carry well. A pond or a swimming pool both appear shallower than they actually are. A pencil in a glass of water appears bent. These effects are caused by changes in the speed of light as it passes from one medium to another, which changes the directions of light rays. When light rays enter a medium in which their speed decreases, as when passing from air into water, the rays bend toward the normal. But when light rays enter a medium in which their speed increases, as when passing from water into air, the rays bend away from the normal. flashlight MIRROR Although the speed of light in air is only 0.03% less than its speed in a vacuum, in some situations atmospheric refraction is quite noticeable. One interesting example is the mirage. On hot days there may be a layer of very hot air in contact with the ground. Since molecules in hot air are farther apart, light travels faster through it than through the cooler air above. The speeding up of the part of the wave nearest the ground produces a gradual bending of the light rays. This can produce an image. The image appears upside down to an observer at the right, just as if it were reflected from a surface of water. But the light is not reflected; it is refracted. A motorist experiences a similar situation when driving along a hot road that appears to be wet ahead. The sky appears to be reflected from a wet surface but, in fact, light from the sky is being refracted through a layer of hot air. A mirage is not, as some people believe, a “trick of the mind.” A mirage is formed by real light and can be photographed. Dispersion Since different frequencies of light travel at different speeds in transparent materials, they will refract differently and bend at different angles. When light is bent twice at nonparallel boundaries, as in a prism, the separation of the different colors of light is quite apparent. This separation of light into colors arranged according to their frequency is called dispersion. Dispersion is what enabled Isaac Newton to produce a spectrum. A spectacular illustration of dispersion is the rainbow. The conditions for seeing a rainbow are that the sun be shining in one part of the sky and that water droplets in a cloud or in falling rain be in the opposite part of the sky. When you turn your back to the sun, you see the spectrum of colors in a bow. Seen high enough from an airplane, the bow forms a complete circle. All rainbows would be completely round is the ground weren’t in the way. Total Internal Reflection When you’re in a physics mood and you’re going to take a bath, fill the tub extra deep and bring a waterproof flashlight into the tub with you. Turn the bathroom light off. Shine the submerged light straight up and then slowly tip it and note how the intensity of the emerging beam diminishes and how more light is reflected from the water surface to the bottom of the tub. At a certain angle, called the critical angle, you’ll notice that the beam no longer emerges into the air above the surface. The intensity of the emerging beam reduces to zero where it tends to graze the surface. When the flashlight is tipped beyond the critical angle (48 degrees from the normal in water), you’ll notice that the beam cannot enter the air; it is only reflected. The beam is experiencing total internal reflection. Light emitted in the water at angles below the critical angle is partly reflected and partly refracted. At the critical angle, the emerging beam skims the surface. Past the critical angle, there is total internal reflection. Total internal reflection is as the name implies: total- 100%. The critical angle for a diamond is 24.6 degrees, smaller than any other known substance. This small critical angle means that light inside a diamond is more likely to be totally internally reflected than to escape. All light rays more than 24.6 degrees from the normal to a surface in a diamond stay inside by total internal reflection. When a diamond is cut as a gemstone, light that enters at one facet is usually totally internally reflected several times, without any loss in intensity, before exiting from another facet in another direction. That’s why you see unexpected flashes from a diamond. Total internal reflection underlies the usefulness of optical fibers. These transparent fibers pipe light from one place to another. They do this by a series of total internal reflections, much like the ricocheting of a ball bearing inside a steel pipe. Optical fibers are useful in getting light to inaccessible places. Mechanics and machinists use them to look at the interiors of engines, and physicians use them to look inside a patient’s body. Light shines down some of the fibers to illuminate the scene and is reflected back along others. Vocabulary Object distance- the distance from the mirror to the object (always +) Image distance- the distance from the mirror to the image; an image can be real (inverted and able to be projected on a screen) or virtual (right-side-up and not able to be projected on a screen) Vocabulary Focal point- the point where parallel rays meet (or appear to meet) after reflecting from a mirror Focal length- the distance from the focal point to the mirror (a converging mirror always has a + value while a diverging mirror has a – value) Mirror equation 1 focal length = 1 + 1 . object image distance distance Converging mirrors (concave) If an object is located more than one focal length from a converging mirror, the image it forms is real, inverted, and in front of the mirror. Both do and di have (+) values. If the object is at the focal point, no image is formed because the reflected rays are parallel. If an object is less than one focal length, the image it forms is virtual, upright, enlarged, and behind the mirror. Do is (+) and di is (-). Diverging mirrors (convex) The image formed by a diverging mirror is always virtual, upright, smaller, and behind the mirror. The image can be seen only by looking into the mirror. Do is (+) while di is (-). Problems Sitting in her parlor one night, Gerty sees the reflection of her cat in the living room window. If the image of the cat makes an angle of 40 degrees with the normal, at what angle does Gerty see him reflected? Wendy the witch is polishing her crystal ball. It is so shiny that she can see her reflection when she gazes into the ball from a distance of 15cm. a) What is the focal length of Wendy’s crystal ball if she can see her reflection 4cm behind the surface? b) Is the image real or virtual? With his face 6cm from his empty water bowl, Spot sees his reflection 12cm behind the bowl and jumps back. What is the focal length of the bowl? Vocabulary Refraction- the change in direction of light due to a change in speed as it passes from one medium to another Index of Refraction The amount of bending is represented with the letter n, which stands for the index of refraction. n= speed of light in vacuum_ speed of light in medium The angle to which light will bend upon passing from one medium to another depends upon the index of refraction of each of the two media, n1 and n2, and the light’s angle of incidence. n1sinØ1 = n2sinØ2 Ø1 = Øi Ø2 = Ør A special case of this equation is used when light is refracted and makes an angle of 90 degrees with the normal. When this happens, the incident angle is called the critical angle. n1sinØc = n2sin90° If the incident angle is any bigger than the critical angle, there is no refraction. This is called total internal reflection. Problems Hickory, a watchmaker, is interested in an old timepiece that’s been brought in for a cleaning. If light travels at 8 1.90x10 m/s in the crystal, what is the crystal’s index of refraction? While fishing out on the lake one summer afternoon, Amy spots a large trout just below the surface of the water at an angle of 60 degrees to the vertical, and she tries to scoop it out of the water with her net. At what angle should Amy aim for the fish (n,water= 1.33)? Binoculars contain prisms inside that reflect light entering at an angle larger than the critical angle. If the index of refraction of a glass prism is 1.58, what is the critical angle for light entering the prism?