CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
Advanced Search
Home > Proceedings > Volume 9289 > Article
Open Access Paper
17 July 2014 Formulation of didactic interest of the laws of refraction of light
Guadalupe Martínez, Ángel Luis Pérez, María Isabel Suero, Francisco L. Naranjo
Author Affiliations +
Proceedings Volume 9289, 12th Education and Training in Optics and Photonics Conference; 92890C (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2070285
Event: 12th Education and Training in Optics and Photonics Conference, 2013, Porto, Portugal
Abstract
In this work, an alternative formulation of the laws of refraction of light is presented. The proposed formulation unifies the two classic laws of refraction, and it is shown the correspondence between the new and the classic formulations. This new formulation presents a remarkable didactic interest for the conceptual interpretation and resolution of classic problems related to the phenomenon of refraction of light, such as those proposed to students of geometric optics on their first year of college. As an example, this formulation is applied for the resolution of two refraction problems typically assigned to student of such educational level. Results and comments from the students are presented. Although rigorously formulated in this work, the new formulation can be stated from a didactic viewpoint, using everyday language, as follows: “When a ray is refracted, the only variation that undergoes its direction vector is that the parallel component to the surface separating two media (defined in the plane formed by the incident ray and the normal to the surface at the point of incidence) is multiplied by the relative refractive index between both media”.
© (2014) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Citation Download Citation
Guadalupe Martínez, Ángel Luis Pérez, María Isabel Suero, and Francisco L. Naranjo "Formulation of didactic interest of the laws of refraction of light", Proc. SPIE 9289, 12th Education and Training in Optics and Photonics Conference, 92890C (17 July 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2070285
PROCEEDINGS
 6 PAGES
DOWNLOAD PAPER SAVE TO MY LIBRARY
GET CITATION
Advertisement
Advertisement
RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS
Get copyright permission  Get copyright permission on Copyright Marketplace
KEYWORDS
Refraction
Refractive index
Geometrical optics
Physics
Interfaces
Wave propagation
Education and training
RELATED CONTENT
Subscribe to Digital Library
Receive Erratum Email Alert
Back to Top