Snell's Law, also known as the law of refraction, is a formula that describes the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction for a wave passing through a boundary between two different media.
Snell's Law is important because it helps us understand how light waves and other types of waves behave when they pass through different materials. This is crucial for many scientific fields, including optics, meteorology, and oceanography.
Snell's Law is calculated using the formula n1 sinθ1 = n2 sinθ2, where n1 and n2 are the indices of refraction for the two media and θ1 and θ2 are the angles of incidence and refraction, respectively.
The two main factors that affect Snell's Law are the indices of refraction of the two media and the angle of incidence. The index of refraction is a measure of how much a material slows down the speed of light, and it varies depending on the material. The angle of incidence is the angle at which the wave enters the second medium.
Snell's Law is used in many real-life applications, such as designing lenses for glasses and cameras, predicting the path of light in optical fibers, and understanding how light is refracted in the atmosphere to create optical illusions. It is also used in fields such as seismology and geophysics to study the behavior of seismic waves passing through different layers of the Earth's crust.