Calculating Apparent Depth: Air vs Water

[Alyce777]

Homework Statement

Instead of calculating apparent depth (for example, a penny in a glass of water appears to be closer to the surface than it actually is), instead of finding the angle of refraction and using snell's law, can I use the following:

Apparent Depth = Actual Depth x (n air / n water)
?

 

[G01]

Yes, that relationship will work for this situation. It comes ultimately from applying Snell's Law and the small angle approximation to the given problem.