Bouncing and Bending Light activity from the Interactive Digital Path website: You observed light passing through lenses and through a set of prisms. Why does refraction occur? Include your lab observations in your answer.
Refraction: It is the phenomenon in which the light rays get bend while travelling from one medium to the another medium. It is due to change in the speed of the light.
The light rays get bend towards the normal while travelling from rarer medium to the denser medium.
The light rays get bend away from the normal while travelling from denser medium to the rarer medium.
When light passes through lenses and through a set of prism then refraction will take place as the light is travelling from rarer medium (air) to the denser medium (prism or lens). It is due to change in the speed of the light.
Refraction occurs because light waves change speed when they pass from one medium to another. When light travels through a medium like air, it moves at a certain speed. However, when it enters a different medium, such as a lens or a prism, its speed changes.
During the Bouncing and Bending Light activity, you observed light passing through lenses and prisms. Here are your lab observations:
1. Lenses: Lenses are transparent objects with curved surfaces, which can either converge (bring light rays together) or diverge (spread light rays apart) the light. When light passes through a lens, it refracts or bends due to the change in speed caused by the lens. If the lens is convex (thicker in the middle), it converges the light rays towards a focal point. Conversely, a concave lens (thinner in the middle) causes the light rays to diverge.
2. Prisms: Prisms are transparent objects with flat surfaces that refract light. When light passes through a prism, it not only refracts but also undergoes dispersion, which means the different colors (wavelengths) of light separate. This is because different colors of light have different speeds in the prism, causing them to bend at different angles. As a result, you observed a beautiful rainbow or spectrum of colors when light passed through the prism.
In summary, refraction occurs when light waves pass from one medium to another, causing them to change speed. In the Bouncing and Bending Light activity, you observed the refraction of light when it passed through lenses and prisms, witnessing convergence or divergence of light in lenses and the dispersion of colors in prisms.