Reflection Definition and 917 Threads

not relating to any specific homework question: how can i go about calculating the relative phase of reflected / transmitted fields for normally incident plane waves? for example, i know how to calculate the relative amplitude of the reflected field from the reflection coefficient...

I know that dielectrics polarize light reflected at/near the Brewster angle, but why is it that metals never do this, only dielectrics? Also, does anyone know of a good, simple conceptual explanation for why light becomes polarized when it's reflected from dielectrics?

Please look at the two sources that describe wave reflection. Hyperphysics states that when a wave meets a rigid surface, it changes phase by 180 deg, such that an upright wave will reflect upright, as to produce a standing wave with the right conditions...

1. A 1 cm tall object sits 6cm to the left of a converging lens, f = 10 cm. A flat plane mirror sits 2 cm to the right of the lens. Light passes through the lens, reflects off the mirror, then back through the lens. Where is the final image? Real or Virtual? Upright or inverted? How big is it...

Homework Statement How far behind the mirror is the image of an object that is located in front of a flat (plane) mirror? Why do you think the image produced by a flat (plane) mirror is called a virtual image Homework Equations The Attempt at a Solution

Homework Statement You need to place a mirror on the left wall of the figure so that the reflected light from the bulb exactly fills the right wall. A) What is the proper height of the mirror? B) How far below the ceiling should the top edge of the mirror be? Homework Equations...

A fortune-teller’s crystal ball is a sphere of diameter 200 mm, made of glass with refractive index 1.70. A candle flame of height 10 mm is placed 1.00 metre away from the surface of the ball. Calculate the position and size of the two images of the flame: (i) reflected in the ball’s...

This is for my 1st year undergrad course but it feels quite basic and not worthy of the 'Advanced Physics' section. Yet there's one thing I'm confused about - I have the answer, just something I don't understand. Homework Statement Light falls normally on a glass surface. What fraction of the...

Homework Statement A point object is placed at distance of 40 cm from a composite refracting slab whose one face is silvered as shown. The separation between the object and its final image is (100 – k)cm. Find the value of k. The Attempt at a Solution I got the separation as...

Homework Statement See figure attached for problem statement. Homework Equations The Attempt at a Solution Using Snell's Law, n_{1}sin(\theta_{1}) = n_{2}sin(\theta_{2}) n_{1} = \frac{n_{2}sin(\theta_{2})}{sin(\theta_{1})} Where, \theta_{1} = 30^{o}, \theta_{2} =...

How is that in refraction of light energy is lost but not in case of total internal reflection? Is the loss in total internal reflection exactly zero?

when light is reflected on a surface, there is always going to be some absorbsion by the reflective material. what I'm curious to find out is whether the losses in refraction are compareable? is it just dependant on the transparency of the material?

Homework Statement You're helping with an experiment in which a vertical cylinder will rotate about its axis by a very small angle. You need to devise a way to measure this angle. You decide to use what is called an optical lever. You begin by mounting a small mirror on top of the cylinder. A...

Find a basis Beta in R^2 such that the beta matrix B of the given linear transformation T is diagonal. The Reflection T about the line R^2 spanned by [1 2], [1 2] is suppose to be verticle. B=S^-1AS or B=[[T(v1)]beta [T(v20]beta] so i found the reflection matrix to be...

Homework Statement 1. When a wave is reflected from a mirror, there is no change in its a) Amplitude b) Frequency c) Velocity d) All Homework Equations The Attempt at a Solution I think frequency changes,not sure

hello ppl, i have a question about the reflection coefficient... since the RC indicates the permeabilty of a membrane for a specific molecule...doesnt that mean (If the RC between 0 and 1) that the concentration of that molecule on both sides of the membrane will become the same after a while...

when we have light reflecting off a material, what's going on there? is it something analogous to a gas particle rebounding off a container wall due to Coulomb repulsion? If so, what is it that exerts a force to reverse the photon's momentum perpendicular to the surface it's reflecting off...

Homework Statement Hi I wonder if anyone can help. I am having difficulty drawing refracted and total internally reflected rays. I have an exam on Monday. Can anybody recommend good websites that can help? Slight panic. Thanks Homework Equations The Attempt at a Solution

If light is from electric source, would persons on places A, B and C register any light in any spectrum.

Question about Total Internal Reflection? My textbook says that for total internal reflection to occur 2 conditions need to be met. Light is traveling more slowly in the first medium than the second medium and no.2 is the angle of incidence must be large enough for no refraction to occur. My...

Question about Total Internal Reflection? My textbook says that for total internal reflection to occur 2 conditions need to be met. Light is traveling more slowly in the first medium than the second medium and no.2 is the angle of incidence must be large enough for no refraction to occur. My...

Hello, I came across something interesting on the internet. I saw an image in which a wine glass was half filled with water and put in the middle of the two different colored backgrounds. In the air portion within the glass, the two backgrounds were visible through the glass, however; in the...

tif we presume that our finite universe has a boundry. This boundry is due to the pull of gravity. Light will slow down and then come back to us. 'i may be absolutely wrong in this'. My question is that the light we see will be from the stars surface that doesn't face us and star moving away...

Homework Statement In the given arrangement pulley P1 and P2 are moving with constant speed vo downward and the centre of the pulley P lies on the principal axis of a convex mirror having radius of curvature R. Find the speed of image of pulley P when it is at a distance x from the surface...

A pulse reaches the boundary of a medium in which the speed of the pulse becomes higher. Is the reflection of the pulse the same as for the incident pulse or is it inverted? Also, does pulse refer only to mechanical waves and not to electromagnetic waves?

What is the law of reflection to the object, when it's perpendicular to the reflective surface. For example, if you face a mirror and stare eye to eye with the reflection- what is the angle?If I have understood correctly, the angle of incidence/reflection is equal, so if for the mirror is...

Hi there! I have a question about the classical interaction of light with matter according the Drude-Lorentz model. Let's suppose that the light in matter has a wave-number k which in general is complex. Then the real part of k accounts for the propagation of light, while the imaginary part of...

In order for us to see something, the light photon needs to be reflected, not absorbed or transmitted? Then is it that the same frequency of visible light keeps falling on something, an apple is always red in white light, why does it reflect red?

Hi all, From what I understand, total internal reflection reflect 100% of light. Suppose you had a transparent material with a critical angle of 45 degrees. Now say you had a cone with a 45 degree angle, and you shined monochromatic light in through the base. Would 100% be reflected (minus...

Homework Statement Find a basis B of R^n such that the B matrix B of the given linear transformation T is diagonal. Reflection T about the plane x_1 - 2x_2 + 2x_3 = 0 in R^3. The Attempt at a Solution I just don't even know where to begin. I don't know how to interpret problem or how to...

Homework Statement 1.if you were to paint a house that reflects heat during summer and radiates heat during winter nights. which color should a house be painted? green, red, black, white, or pink? 2. why do gardeners mix soot in the soil? The Attempt at a Solution 1.i say it is...

I'm confused as to how the diffuse reflection is computed as : \frac{1} {\pi} * LightRadiance * cos(\theta) Where cos(\theta) is the angle between the light and the surface normal, and accounts for the light projected onto the surface When considering light reflecting at a point from some...

http://www.screencast.com/users/trinhn812/folders/Jing/media/07c73e88-45a9-4703-91e1-237b20135d2c I'm not sure why the answer is A. I tried reasoning myself that it has to do with the critical angle, but I can't seem to convince myself.

Hey all, I am new to these forums. I am thinking of taking a distance learning degree in the near future from Open University in Physics, so decided to do some reading up first as it has been a while since I hav etuched physics. Anyway I am reading a book at the minute "Quantam Theory cannot...

Here's the problem : Air flows in a passage with an initial Mach No. 2. Determine maximum turning angle A for which 3 regular reflections (i.e. no Mach reflection) of the original oblique shock are possible? Now, what exactly is a mach reflection? Also, what is the minimum Mach number...

what causes the reflection of light from a surface?? why can't light simply move through the shiny surface that reflects it...ya difference in penetrating strength... if we try to explain it at the microscopic level... why would the particles of the shiny surface make it bounce back making an...

i wonder how it's possible that due to reflection from water say of light only perpendicular components remain and others are refracted.

How would the reflected light from the sun or moon apear if the water surface were perfectly smooth?and why does reflected light from the sun or moon appear as a column in the body of water like here http://www.free-slideshow.com/screens/waves_sunsets/sun-over-the-ocean.jpg

How do free electrons of metals reflect photons? I had read that they first absorb and then emit the photon but if they are free (not bound to an atom and thus not fixed to any old energy level) why should they lose their energy on the first place? Surely they don't have to drop to their...

Why do we measure the angle of incidence or reflection (or say refraction even) w.r.t normal to the surface and why not w.r.t the horizontal surface?

I wonder why is there a gap at the starting of the reflected light when i conduct this experiment? Can anybody explain this to me? Thanks!

I've attached the multiple choice question. The first time round that I did it, I simply just did a phase shift of the whole graph by pi. Basically I just translated the whole graph by pi, resulting in option (D). However, it later came to my attention that by continuing to draw the...

Homework Statement For a beam of light shone on a prism, the reflected beams will give twice the angle of the prism. Homework Equations We know that the angle between the incident ray and the normal = angle between reflected ray and normal The Attempt at a Solution i tried drawing...

[b]1. A person riding in a boat observes that the sunlight reflected by the water is polarized parallel to the surface of the water. The person is wearing polarized sunglasses with the polarization axis vertical. If the wearer leans at an angle of 17.0 degrees to the vertical, what fraction...

:bugeye:Hi All... I am really confused about the mechanism of loss of energy when an EM wave hits a metal surface. I always thought the reflection was due to the motion of the electrons in the metal (due to the electric field of the wave). Which suggests that resistive losses would come...

Okay so in a problem I have a vector reflecting off a mirror. I have the equation for the normal of the mirror at the coordinates where the vector of light hits the mirror. The normal of the mirror and the vector incident are in the same geometric plane. How do I find the refection of the vector...

An Example Scenario: A particle moves at 32° and collides with a wall. This wall is rectangular in nature, which means that there is both horizontal and vertical sides. On a horizontal tangent, it would work like this (sorry for ugly, not-to-scale diagrams)...

Homework Statement If I have a coaxial transmission line, with a resistor halfway through, and another resistor at the end, how do I calculate the reflection coefficient for the spot where the resistor is halfway? Here is a diagram of what I mean. Dashes and dots are are the lines, and }...

If the question was that why are some materials opaque and why some are transparent, the answer would be found in the energy bands. If energy bands allow such transitions for electrons, that they can absorb photon, then they will absorb it, and the photon does not go through the material. If...

I’ve heard that the reason radio telescope dishes can be made out of wire mesh is because, so long as the size of the holes is less than (I believe) 1/10 the wavelength of the radio wave, the wave be reflected (it will see the dish as being solid). I was wondering what the physical reason was...