- #1
ajay.05
- 46
- 3
This may be silly...but why does light bend on moving from one medium to another medium. i can understand that, the density of particles, make it difficult for light to travel, hence it slows down. But why should it bend?
The slowing causes the bend:ajay.05 said:hence it slows down. But why should it bend?
Can you please elaborateA.T. said:
ajay.05 said:Can you please elaborate
ajay.05 said:Can you please elaborate
I think in the Huygens picture, the requirement is completely geometrical. The semi circles are the wavelets that are emitted at every point on the wavefront. On the incident surface, points on the incident wavefront arrive at different times and the wavelets are thus considered to emerge at different instants.ajay.05 said:Can you please elaborate
Thank you! Well Explained!mukul said:I was in the same situation some time back, trying to understand reason for refraction of wave.
I will share with you my findings.
First thing, I don't think the video above gives the right explanation.
Since if you try to find out the reason for the observed behavior in the above video
you will see that one wheel wants to go with faster speed and other slower.
Due to which a force on faster wheel acts towards the slower wheel and eventually as the result of all the mechanics happening, the direction of wheel gets changed.
but none of such thing happens in case of wave. No wave exerts a force on another,
or alters the motion of any other wave in any way.
Also if we perform the above experiment with cycle, then we will see that it doesn't bend.
So what does really happens then?
Basically the first important point here to understand is that a wave is in constant urge of bending or
more correct spreading.
This is clearer if we perform a simple experiment, where we let the wave pass through a hole.
We see that as the wave passes the hole, it spreads uniformly as shown in diagram below.
View attachment 77041
This is also known as diffraction.This same urge of spreading is there all the times (known as Hygen's principle), but is not observed earlier (before reaching the hole)
as the urge to spread by wave at a point is canceled by the urge to spread by the wave at the adjacent point
and thus ultimately as a result, the whole wave just moves forward.
Now, if we do two holes,
then we can notice that wave reaches one hole earlier and the other hole later.
The wave after reaching the first hole spreads in all direction until the wave from the second hole arrives and
the combined effect comes into play. So this in all means that during the time second wave arrives,
first wave get the chance to spread freely and this leads to refraction, where you consider there are infinite adjacent such holes.
View attachment 77042View attachment 77043Hope this helps.
Light bends when it passes through different mediums because it travels at different speeds in each medium. This change in speed causes the light to change direction, a phenomenon known as refraction.
Refraction is caused by the change in speed of light when it passes through different substances. This change in speed is due to the difference in density and optical properties of each medium.
Yes, the angle of incidence (the angle at which light enters a medium) does affect the amount of refraction. The greater the angle of incidence, the more the light will bend upon entering the second medium.
Colors of light bend at different angles because they have different wavelengths. The shorter the wavelength, the more the light will bend. This is why we see rainbows when white light is refracted through water droplets, as each color has a different wavelength and bends at a different angle.
No, light cannot bend in a vacuum. Refraction occurs when light travels through different mediums, so in a vacuum where there is no change in medium, light will travel in a straight line.