Refraction

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created: 2021-10-24 22:30:44
modified: 2022-01-10 04:13:04

Refraction is the change of direction of a wave passing from one medium to the other or from gradual change in the medium.

Refraction of light and Snell's law

The refraction of light is described by Snell's law:

Where and are the phase velocities in the media, and are the indices of refraction, is the angle of incidence and is the angle of refraction.

This law can be derived in several ways, e.g. using Fermat's principle.