Refraction Of Light Video Lessons

Concept

# Problem: Consider a beam of light travelling from a medium with a low index of refraction n1 to a new medium with a higher index of refraction n2. Use Snell’s Law to explain why total internal reflection will never occur in this situation, regardless of the choice of incident angle.

###### FREE Expert Solution

Snell's law:

$\overline{){{\mathbf{\eta }}}_{{\mathbf{1}}}{\mathbf{s}}{\mathbf{i}}{\mathbf{n}}{{\mathbf{\theta }}}_{{\mathbf{1}}}{\mathbf{=}}{{\mathbf{\eta }}}_{{\mathbf{2}}}{\mathbf{s}}{\mathbf{i}}{\mathbf{n}}{{\mathbf{\theta }}}_{{\mathbf{2}}}}$

We can write:

η12 = sinθ2/sinθ1

Define θ= θc, where θc is the critical angle.

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###### Problem Details

Consider a beam of light travelling from a medium with a low index of refraction n1 to a new medium with a higher index of refraction n2. Use Snell’s Law to explain why total internal reflection will never occur in this situation, regardless of the choice of incident angle.