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Ahmed1029
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Where do the laws of reflection, refraction, and Snell's law come from in geometric optics? Are they derivable from basic laws of physics?
I derive them in class as originating from conservation of (linear) momentum.Where do the laws of reflection, refraction, and Snell's law come from in geometric optics? Are they derivable from basic laws of physics?
Whenever you have waves, you'll get reflection and refraction. You can derive these laws from analyzing how waves propagate through media in general. The others have indicated some approaches to doing this. Using Huygen's principle is another way.Where do the laws of reflection, refraction, and Snell's law come from in geometric optics? Are they derivable from basic laws of physics?
So is geometric optics derived from the physics of waves? which one comes first?Whenever you have waves, you'll get reflection and refraction. You can derive these laws from analyzing how waves propagate through media in general. The others have indicated some approaches to doing this. Using Huygen's principle is another way.
At a little deeper level, the laws are a consequence of the boundary conditions the wave must satisfy where the two media meet. For the case of a wave propagating down a string connected to a different string, one condition arises because the strings must stay tied together, and another from the fact that the strings exert equal and opposite forces on each other, i.e., Newton's third law. For light, the electric and magnetic fields have to satisfy similar boundary conditions to satisfy Maxwell's equations.
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/how-is-phase-velocity-related-to-deflection-angle.1010744/ # 8 Snell's law is not derived from Fermat's principle.I think you need the principle that light follows the path that minimises travel time.
That's not what I said. In that thread I said "what's wrong with the explanation on Wikipedia", to which you replied "you mean Fermat's principle", to which I replied (correctly) that Fermat's principle is not mentioned on the page about refraction (although I didn't look at the page on Snell's law, which does, so perhaps we were looking at different pages). At the time, I was not explaining, I was attempting to get you to tell us what explanations you were aware of and say what you didn't understand about them because there was no point repeating stuff you already knew.https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/how-is-phase-velocity-related-to-deflection-angle.1010744/ # 8 Snell's law is not derived from Fermat's principle.
From a fundamental-physics point of view "optics" is just a special application of Maxwellian electrodynamics (or even quantum electrodynamics, given that nowadays "quantum optics" is ubiquitous), i.e., it's wave optics. Geometrical optics can be derived from wave optics using the socalled eikonal approximation, which is valid if the typical scale of spatial variations of the matter around are small on the scale of a typical wavelength of the light under consideration.So is geometric optics derived from the physics of waves? which one comes first?
I am skeptical like many wiki readers in Talk:Snell's law page contents 19 & 25.(although I didn't look at the page on Snell's law, which does, so perhaps we were looking at different pages). At the time, I was not explaining, I was attempting to get you to tell us what explanations you were aware of and say what you didn't understand about them because there was no point repeating stuff you already knew.