Question

(i) State Snell's law of refraction of light.
(ii) A transparent medium A floats on another transparent medium B, when a ray of lights travels obliquely from A into B, the refracted ray bends away from the normal. Which of the two media A and B is optically denser and why?

Answer 1

(i) Snell's law gives the amount of bending of light rays. It also determines the relationship between the angle of incidence, the angle of refraction and relative indices of a given pair of media. It states that the ratio of the sine of the angle of incidence to the sine of the angle of refraction is a constant for the light of given color and for the given pair of media.

(ii) Medium A will be optically denser than medium B because a ray of light will bend away from the normal when it travels from a denser to rarer medium. This is in accordance with Snell's Law.