1

Why is refraction so uniform? At the end of the day, all that is happening is a photon of light is hitting atoms of a material, say, glass slab and getting absorbed and re-emitted. How is it that the photon, which is "absorbed and re-emitted" emitted in such a precise of an angle?

Am I wrong with 'photon hitting atoms'? If yes then please tell me what's actually happening. Also, apologies if I didn't get the glass slab material right.

Potato
  • 13

1 Answers1

2

Very simply explanation but in terms of waves, the light is emitted in most angles, but the superposition of all of the corresponding waves means that only one results(most of the time). Look up Fresnel equations, it’s actually more complex then you'd think. For example for a given polarisation there's an angle where no light is reflected at all, but the same angle on a different polarisation there is reflection. Also e.g refraction, you'd mostly assume there is only 1 " beam" of light with a single direction..Yet there is something called bi-refringence that splits up the light into 2 beams causing a double image( for unpolarised light)

comment:Obviously to understand refraction and reflection for different materials, different frequency and polarisation of light, requires ALOT and I mean ALOT of math, and alot of concepts such as electromagnetic polarisation density and its relation to permitivity(modelling as harmonic oscillator e.g), EM boundary conditions, solving maxwell's equations, Deriving Fresnel relations. But the key thing is this, When an electromagnetic wave in incident at a material, the Em wave that is made of an electric and magnetic field exerts a force on the charge configurations inside materials, causing those charges to be accelerated. these charges produce EM waves due to this acceleration, and the SUM of all of those waves ( superposition) make up the light that we see as being " reflected or refracted" the math shows what the SUM of the waves look like. reflection of light isn't even the same light, it's different light that is produced by the accelerated charged inside the material

ZeroTheHero
  • 45,515
jensen paull
  • 6,624
  • Thanks for your answer but I lost you at "superposition" can my question not be answered with what I know as of now? I know nothing except that light is a ray and that white light is composed of 7 colors ROYGBIV we're actually studying relfection in mirror, lenses and refraction through glass slabs and prisms (which is just the splitting of white light and literally nothing else that is in our course) and you are right on the 1 beam of light thing uhm – Potato Nov 02 '21 at 22:58
  • too long to comment read the answer edit – jensen paull Nov 02 '21 at 23:06
  • and white light is not composed of u colours white light is what our brain interprets as "lots of different frequencies of light" idealy all frequencies of the visible range ( almost infinite colours) – jensen paull Nov 02 '21 at 23:08
  • ah I see I have yet to learn a lot more and I will try my hardest to do it thanks – Potato Nov 02 '21 at 23:18
  • Try Griffiths introduction to electrodynamics – jensen paull Nov 02 '21 at 23:20
  • alright I'll start from there – Potato Nov 02 '21 at 23:21