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The principal ray or chief ray (sometimes known as the b ray) in an optical system is the meridional ray that starts at an edge of an object and passes through the center of the aperture stop. [ 5 ] [ 8 ] [ 7 ] The distance between the chief ray (or an extension of it for a virtual image) and the optical axis at an image location defines the ...
The largest possible angle of incidence which still results in a refracted ray is called the critical angle; in this case the refracted ray travels along the boundary between the two media. Refraction of light at the interface between two media. For example, consider a ray of light moving from water to air with an angle of incidence of 50°.
A slightly more rigorous definition of a light ray follows from Fermat's principle, which states that the path taken between two points by a ray of light is the path that can be traversed in the least time. [1] Geometrical optics is often simplified by making the paraxial approximation, or "small angle approximation
A ray with a terminus at A, with two points B and C on the right. Given a line and any point A on it, we may consider A as decomposing this line into two parts. Each such part is called a ray and the point A is called its initial point. It is also known as half-line, a one-dimensional half-space. The point A is considered to be a member of the ray.
Since the phase velocity is lower in the second medium (v 2 < v 1), the angle of refraction θ 2 is less than the angle of incidence θ 1; that is, the ray in the higher-index medium is closer to the normal. Optical prisms and lenses use refraction to redirect light, as does the human eye.
In ray tracing, the vergence can then be pictured as the angle between any two rays. For imaging or beams, the vergence is often described as the angle between the outermost rays in the bundle (marginal rays), at the edge (verge) of a cone of light, and the optical axis. This slope is typically measured in radians. Thus, in this case the ...
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An angle larger than a right angle and smaller than a straight angle (between 90° and 180°) is called an obtuse angle [6] ("obtuse" meaning "blunt"). An angle equal to 1 / 2 turn (180° or π radians) is called a straight angle. [5] An angle larger than a straight angle but less than 1 turn (between 180° and 360°) is called a reflex ...