Reflection and Refraction on a Flat Surface between Two Different Materials
Initializing live version

Requires a Wolfram Notebook System
Interact on desktop, mobile and cloud with the free Wolfram Player or other Wolfram Language products.
When a ray of light hits the surface between two different materials, part of it is reflected and part of it is refracted through the second material. Call the angle between the incoming ray and the normal to the surface. The angle of reflection is
, while the angle of refraction is
, satisfying
, where
and
are the ratios between the speed of light in a vacuum and in the materials,
and
. There is no reflected ray when
.
Contributed by: Stra Federico (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Snapshots
Details
Permanent Citation