A ray of light traveling from a rectangular glass block of refractive index 1.5 into air strikes the block at an angle of incidence of 30. Calculate its ang...
A ray of light traveling from a rectangular glass block of refractive index 1.5 into air strikes the block at an angle of incidence of 30. Calculate its angle of refraction.
Answer Details
The angle of refraction of a ray of light traveling from one medium to another can be calculated using Snell's law. Snell's law states that the ratio of the sine of the angle of incidence to the sine of the angle of refraction is equal to the ratio of the indices of refraction of the two media. Mathematically, this can be expressed as: sin θincidence / sin θrefraction = n1 / n2 Where θincidence is the angle of incidence, θrefraction is the angle of refraction, n1 is the index of refraction of the first medium, and n2 is the index of refraction of the second medium. Given the angle of incidence of 30° and the indices of refraction of 1.5 for the rectangular glass block and 1.0 for air, we can calculate the angle of refraction as follows: sin θincidence / sin θrefraction = n1 / n2 sin 30° / sin θrefraction = 1.5 / 1.0 sin θrefraction = sin 30° / 1.5 θrefraction = sin-1(sin 30° / 1.5) = 19.47° Therefore, the angle of refraction of the ray of light traveling from the rectangular glass block into air is approximately 19.47°.