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Measuring The Critical Angle For Glass: Light Rays and Refraction

This document discusses light refraction and the use of prisms. It describes how to measure the critical angle of incidence for light entering glass using a semicircular block of glass. A ray of light entering at 90 degrees will be internally reflected at the critical angle without refracting. Prisms are also discussed, including how a right-angled prism can turn light 90 degrees through one total internal reflection, and how a pentaprism inside a SLR camera turns light rays twice to produce an upright image.

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Baba Brian
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62 views1 page

Measuring The Critical Angle For Glass: Light Rays and Refraction

This document discusses light refraction and the use of prisms. It describes how to measure the critical angle of incidence for light entering glass using a semicircular block of glass. A ray of light entering at 90 degrees will be internally reflected at the critical angle without refracting. Prisms are also discussed, including how a right-angled prism can turn light 90 degrees through one total internal reflection, and how a pentaprism inside a SLR camera turns light rays twice to produce an upright image.

Uploaded by

Baba Brian
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Light rays and refraction

Measuring the critical angle for glass This angle is twice the critical angle since the angle of
A semicircular block of glass or perspex is particularly reflection equals the critical angle of incidence. Thus half
suitable for this experiment because it allows a ray of light this angle gives the critical angle c.
to enter the glass through the curved edge without being
refracted. This happens when a ray is directed at the centre Figure 2.8 Measuring the critical angle
of the flat edge along a radius so that it enters the curved
surface at 90, as shown in fig. 2.8.
Draw round the semicircular block on a sheet of paper and by
measurement draw a normal at the midpoint of the straight side.
Direct a ray of light through the glass to be internally reflected
exactly at the midpoint of the straight side.
Move the ray box round until the critical condition is found.
It should be possible to see a refracted ray grazing just
along the surface so that r = 90.
Mark the direction of the incident ray and reflected ray with
two crosses each.
Remove the block and draw in the rays.
Measure the angle between the incident and reflected rays with
a protractor.

Prisms at work
Prisms are blocks of glass or transparent material with a triangular
section. They come in various shapes and sizes with different angles
between the three sides.
A prism with one 90 corner and two 45 corners can be used to
turn a ray of light through 90. Such a right-angled prism is used in some
periscopes in preference to a plane mirror because there is no exposed
silvered surface to become damaged and no multiple reflections.
The ray is totally internally reflected once, because the angle of
incidence i = 45 is greater than the critical angle for glass to air, c = 42.
The ray is deviated by 90.
A right-angled prism can also turn rays of light through 180 by two
total internal reflections. These eliminate lateral inversion because
reflection has occurred twice, but the image is seen inverted as shown in
figure (b). Two pairs of these prisms are used in prism binoculars to
reduce the length of the instrument and produce an erect final image for
the whole instrument (p 51).
A five-sided prism or pentaprism is used in many modern cameras. In
a single lens reflex (SLR) camera the pentaprism is used to turn the light
rays round inside the camera so that the photographer can see the
actual picture he is going to take through the camera lens. By two total
internal reflections the pentaprism turns the light through 90 and
produces an image which is erect and not laterally inverted. The
external surfaces of the prism need to be silvered for total internal
reflection to occur because the angles of incidence are less than the
critical angle.
b) A right-angled prism used to turn rays of light through 180o

c) The pentaprism used in a single lens reflex camera

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