NAME:Jovan James
TITLE:Refraction
AIM: to determine the refractive index of a glass using a rectangular glass block.
APPARATUS AND MATERIALS:
Optical pins, protractor, rectangular glass block, pencil, plain white paper, optical
board, tape, ruler
DIAGRAM:
METHOD:
1.A sheet of paper was fastened to the optical board to ensure that the optical pins can be
pressed through the paper easily.
[Link] outline of the rectangular glass block was drawn on the paper
3.a ruler was used to draw the normal in a position as show in the diagram.
4.a protractor was used to draw an incident ray at 30 °C to the normal
[Link] pin1 and optical pin2 was pressed onto the paper as shown in the
diagram,in which pin1 was ensured to be closer to the end of the was and pin2
was closer to the glass block.
[Link] glass block was placed accurately in the outline.
[Link] the glass block was looked into at table level and a position was found
dwhere the image of pin2 completely covers pin1.
8.pin3 and pin4 was then pressed in so that they will in turn cover the images
of pin1 and pin2.
9.pin3 and pin4 was then removed and the holes in the paper was marked with
a small x.
[Link] glass block was then removed and the emergent ray was drawn from the
outline through both marked points.
[Link] second normal was then indicated,and measured and labeled the angl
produced as the angle of emergence.
[Link] refracted ray was then drawn ,then measured and labeled this as the
angle of refraction.
[Link] procedure was repeated for angles of incidence at 10°, 20°, 40°, 50°, 60°
and 70°.
[Link] the values for θi and θr was tabulated and then a calculator was used to
determine the value of sin i and sin r.
15.A graph was then plotted of sin i against sin r and the gradient of the
straight line produced was determined.
normal line was drawn at a specific position ug a r
Theory:
The refraction of light is the bendin of a light ray as it passes from one transparent medium
to another due to a change in its speed in which occurs when light moves at different
speeds in different objects such as air,water,[Link] example a mirror reflects light
allowing people to see a virtual image of [Link] bending of light occurs along a
path like the incoming path wich is called the incident ray and the bent path is called the
refracted [Link] angle of incidence is basically how the light is coming into an material and
the angle of refraction is the angle at which light is traveling after it bent in which the rules
of refraction says that the incident ray,refracted ray and the normal to the interface of two
medial at the point of incidence all lie on the same plane also called and known as snell’s
law.
Results and Calculations:
Angle of Incidence Angle of refraction Sin i Sin r
i(°) r(°)
10 15 0.174 0.259
20 20 0.342 0.342
30 25 0.500 0.423
40 28 0.643 0.469
50 34 0.766 0.559
60 38 0.866 0.616
70 43 0.940 0.682
Y-axis =sin i(Sin of Angle of Incidence) sin r =0.259 sin i =0.174
X-axis=sin r(sin of angle of refraction) sin r =0.682 sin i =0.940
Gradient(m)=
PRECAUTIONS:
[Link] sure the pins were vertical and in line with each other and in in a straight line
which can gaurantee that the incident ray was accurate as if the pins were tilted the point
of incidence on the glass block would be incorrect resulting in errors.
[Link] at the pins at eye level and from a good distance so that they appear to be in a
perfect straight line with all the other pins which minimized parallax error.
Source of error:
1. The glass block may have had some impurities and imperfections which means that
light may of not have bent properly each time causing inaccuracies in the angle of
refraction.
2. The glass is not perfectly aligned with its outline which causes misalignment in
which leads to the light entering and exiting the glass block at different positions
DISCUSSION:
In this experiment we conducted we saw that the placement of the pins was needed to be
placed as far apart as possible to minimize alignment errors where when the pins are too
close to each other they appear much larger which reduces the accuracy of the rays so
therefore the pins are placed as far away as possible to get a more precise and accurate
[Link] gradient is 1.81 in which represents the refractive index of the [Link] mergent
rays were parallel to their corresponding incident rays because when light passes through
a medium with all sides parallel for example the glass block used in this experiment it
causes the light to bend by the same but opposite amount when it [Link] were a few
key difficulties that happened to me like for example the accumulation of pin holes which
caused me difficulty in finding the correct two points used in which I may of have gotten
inaccurate results due to my reflective index being so high.
REFLECTION:This lab helped me to see that the concept of refraction is applicable in
everyday life because it is understanding how light travels and bends when moving
through different objects and materials whic his crucial for stuff like lenses for example
when you need glasses the curvature of the lenses is found by using refraction.
Conclusion:
My investigation was successful as it proves that light bends when it passes between
materials which comfirmed snell’s law. The value that was obtained for the refractive
index was 1.81