How can you tell whether a medium has low or high index of refraction?

0 3 Views | Posted 4 weeks ago
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  • J

    Answered by

    Jaya Sharma | Contributor-Level 10

    4 weeks ago

    You can identify whether a medium has higher or lower refractive index through the three ways. The first step is to observe the direction of bending. In this case, if the light is bending towards the normal, the second medium has higher refractive index. If the light bends away from normal, first medium has higher index of refraction. 

    In the second method, you can use Snell's law. If the second angle is smaller than the first one, second medium has higher refractive index. In case the first angle is smaller than second one, first medium has higher index of refraction. The third method is critical angle method where, if the light u

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J
Jaya Sharma

When these two media are compared, then, it is evident that rarer medium has lower refracted index as compared to denser medium. Denser media like glass and water have higher refractive index whereas rarer medium like air and vacuum have lower refractive index. Due to this, the light will bend towards the normal when it travels from rarer to denser medium. On the other hand, light will bend away from normal when it travels from denser to a rarer medium.

J
Jaya Sharma

Whenever a light ray travels from a rarer medium to a denser medium through a spherical surface, relationship between object distance (u), image distance (v), radius of curvature (R) and refractive index ( n 1 and n 2 ) is given by refraction formula for spherical surfaces as follows.

n 2 v - n 1 u = n 2 - n 1 R

 

  • n 1 is the refractive index of medium that contains the object (on the left side)
  • n 2 is refractive index of medium that will contain the image (on the right side)
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