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  2. Snell's law - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell's_law

    Snell's law (also known as the Snell–Descartes law, the ibn-Sahl law, [1] and the law of refraction) is a formula used to describe the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction, when referring to light or other waves passing through a boundary between two different isotropic media, such as water, glass, or air.

  3. Reflection (physics) - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_(physics)

    Reflection of light is either specular (mirror-like) or diffuse (retaining the energy, but losing the image) depending on the nature of the interface.In specular reflection the phase of the reflected waves depends on the choice of the origin of coordinates, but the relative phase between s and p (TE and TM) polarizations is fixed by the properties of the media and of the interface between them.

  4. Geometrical optics - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometrical_optics

    For flat mirrors, the law of reflection implies that images of objects are upright and the same distance behind the mirror as the objects are in front of the mirror. The image size is the same as the object size. (The magnification of a flat mirror is equal to one.) The law also implies that mirror images are parity inverted, which is perceived ...

  5. Specular reflection - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specular_reflection

    Specular reflection, or regular reflection, is the mirror-like reflection of waves, such as light, from a surface. [ 1 ] The law of reflection states that a reflected ray of light emerges from the reflecting surface at the same angle to the surface normal as the incident ray, but on the opposing side of the surface normal in the plane formed by ...

  6. Optics - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optics

    For flat mirrors, the law of reflection implies that images of objects are upright and the same distance behind the mirror as the objects are in front of the mirror. The image size is the same as the object size. The law also implies that mirror images are parity inverted, which we perceive as a left-right inversion. Images formed from ...

  7. Total internal reflection - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_internal_reflection

    Fig. 1: Underwater plants in a fish tank, and their inverted images (top) formed by total internal reflection in the water–air surface. In physics, total internal reflection (TIR) is the phenomenon in which waves arriving at the interface (boundary) from one medium to another (e.g., from water to air) are not refracted into the second ("external") medium, but completely reflected back into ...

  8. Helmholtz reciprocity - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmholtz_reciprocity

    Intuitively, "If I can see you, you can see me." Like the principles of thermodynamics, in suitable conditions, this principle is reliable enough to use as a check on the correct performance of experiments, in contrast with the usual situation in which the experiments are tests of a proposed law. [1] [12]

  9. Huygens–Fresnel principle - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens–Fresnel_principle

    Wave refraction in the manner of Huygens Wave diffraction in the manner of Huygens and Fresnel. The Huygens–Fresnel principle (named after Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens and French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel) states that every point on a wavefront is itself the source of spherical wavelets, and the secondary wavelets emanating from different points mutually interfere. [1]