Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Although total internal reflection can occur with any kind of wave that can be said to have oblique incidence, including (e.g.) microwaves [1] and sound waves, [2] it is most familiar in the case of light waves. Total internal reflection of light can be demonstrated using a semicircular-cylindrical block of common glass or acrylic glass.
By 1817 it had been discovered by Brewster, [203] but not adequately reported, [204] [183]: 324 that plane-polarized light was partly depolarized by total internal reflection if initially polarized at an acute angle to the plane of incidence. Fresnel rediscovered this effect and investigated it by including total internal reflection in a ...
The phase shift of the reflected wave on total internal reflection can similarly be obtained from the phase angles of r p and r s (whose magnitudes are unity in this case). These phase shifts are different for s and p waves, which is the well-known principle by which total internal reflection is used to effect polarization transformations .
1611 – Johannes Kepler discovers total internal reflection, a small-angle refraction law, and thin lens optics, c1620 – the first compound microscopes appear in Europe. [10] 1621 – Willebrord van Roijen Snell states his Snell's law of refraction; 1630 – Cabaeus finds that there are two types of electric charges
In late 1825, [43] to reduce the loss of light in the reflecting elements, Fresnel proposed to replace each mirror with a catadioptric prism, through which the light would travel by refraction through the first surface, then total internal reflection off the second surface, then refraction through the third surface. [44]
[Note 3] By including total internal reflection in a chromatic-polarization experiment, he found that the apparently depolarized light was a mixture of components polarized parallel and perpendicular to the plane of incidence, and that the total reflection introduced a phase difference between them. [17]
This of course is impossible, and the light in such cases is completely reflected by the boundary, a phenomenon known as total internal reflection. 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.
The light was trapped by the total internal reflection of the tube until the water jet, upon which edge the light incidented at a glancing angle, broke up and carried the light in a curved flow. Colladon reported this experiment to a wider audience in the Comptes rendus , the French Academy of Sciences ' journal, in 1842.