Does Refraction through a Glass Slab Cause Different Levels of Image Distortion?

[thinker93]

A glass Slab is placed over a page on which the word VIBGYOR is written with each letter in its corresponding colour.
Will the image of all letters appear to be in the same level or will each letter be raised by different levels?

 

[Andy Resnick]

What do you think will happen?

 

[thinker93]

I think that all the letters will be at the same level.

 

[Dadface]

Wrong answer thinker.Heres a clue...Why does a prism split light into its component colours?

 

[thinker93]

I know what you're trying to say. According to you the colours will get separated because of their different wavelengths. Therefore the image formed will be formed differently. But what I think is that in a glass slab no dispersion occurs. Therefore the colours , even after dispersion will form images at the same level.

 

[cragar]

because the lower the frequency the faster the light moves through the glass ,
so its the speed.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Thinker93- you are on the right track. Now, what is the essential difference between a slab and a prism?

 

[prem93]

well refraction does occur in a glass slab...the primary difference is that a glass slab has parallael surfaces while prism has 3 non parallel ones...the point is that when we draw the ray diagram for a ray that passes through a glass slab,we usuall draw for 1 ray but the point is that a beam of rays strike the glass slab...and effective overlapping occurs in the emergent rays that dipersion is not observed in a glass slab ...howevever a violet and red fringe rays are seen in the ends of the emergent beam ...but in the case of a glass prism clearly the refracting surfaces are non parallel...and even though efeective overlapping occurs in the set of emergent rays...but they do not occur to such an extent and we r able to observe partial dispersion....well in this case all the letters will not be to appear in the same level violrt will apear to raise higher and red the least