Shedding Light on Refraction

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Description

Anyone standing in front of a mirror will instantly recognize the concept of reflection at work, but to observe the process of refraction and to develop an in-depth knowledge of it is quite a different story. This video helps students understand how light behaves when it passes through transparent materials and how refraction plays a role in nature and in human life. With engaging explanations and no-nonsense animation, the program explains the refractive index, incident ray, angle of incidence, refracted ray, angle of refraction, normal line, and what it means for light to turn "toward the normal" or "away from the normal." Helpful graphics illustrate the velocities at which light travels through a vacuum, air, water, and glass, and how these speeds are used in physics and optics calculations. The topic of total internal reflection is also covered.