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Measurement of refractive index of a liquid

Article  in  The Physics Teacher · February 2012

DOI: 10.1119/1.3677297

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Christopher Chiaverina, Column Editor,
4111 Connecticut Trail, Crystal Lake, IL 60012; fizzforfun@aol.com little gems
Measurement of refractive
index of a liquid
Paul Gluck, Jerusalem College of Engineering, Jerusalem, Israel; opaque blank
gluckpaul@gmail.com strip sheet
Taha Massalha, Arab College of Education, Haifa, Israel

T here are many methods for measuring the refractive

index of liquids.1-7 In this note we present a very simple
and accurate method that can be used as a teacher dem-
Fig. 1. The setup.

onstration or as a class experiment. We have not found it

described elsewhere.
All one needs is an open rectangular container with thin
θ1
transparent walls (an aquarium will do), a small light source,
θ2
an opaque strip 3-4 cm wide, and a sheet of paper. source L wf we
Affix the strip along the middle of one wall of the container,
and the sheet of paper on the wall opposite, as shown in Fig.
1. The light source is placed at a convenient distance near the
strip. With the container empty, the edges of the shadow of the d
strip are marked on the paper sheet opposite. Now fill the con-
Fig. 2. Geometry for finding n.
tainer with liquid and mark again the width of the shadow, re-
duced compared to the previous width because of refraction.
Let L, we, and wf be the widths of the strip, the shadow
when the box is empty, and the shadow when the box is full,
respectively. Then the simple geometry shown in the side view
of Fig. 2 (the red lines show the refracted edge rays) allows one
to calculate the refractive index n of the liquid. Using Snell's
law,

n sin q2 = sin q1 ,

and the approximation sin q ≈ tan q, justified by the dimen- Fig. 3. Photo of shadows with and without
the water.
sions of the apparatus, we have

In our setup the width of the container was d = 35 cm, the

source was 5 cm from the strip, and L = 3.7 cm. Figure 3 is a
photo of the shadows obtained with and without the water.
Figure 4 shows the marks of the shadow edges.
We measured the following shadow widths: we = 8.9 cm,
wf = 7.6 cm, giving n = 1.33.
Note that adjusting the strength of the source, the width
of the container (affecting the absorption of light), and the Fig. 4. Measuring the widths of the shadows.
distance of the source from the opaque strip will result in opti- 4. H. Kruglak, “Swimming pool optics,” Phys. Teach. 25, 440 (Oct.
mally sharp shadows. 1987).
References 5. J. S. Miller, Demonstrations in Physics (Ure Smith, London,
1. D. R. Carpenter and R. B. Minnix, The Dick and Rae Physics 1969), p. 387.
Demo Notebook (Virginia Polytechnic Institute), Expt. 0-220. 6. S. Singh, “Refractive index measurements and its applications,”
2. B. P. Chandra and S. C. Bhaiya, “A simple, accurate alternative to Physica Scripta 65, 167 (2002). This is an extensive review of
the minimum deviation method of determining the refractive methods, with many references.
index of liquids,” Am. J. Phys. 51, 160–161 (Feb. 1983). 7. W. Yunus and C. F. Ling, “A simple method for measuring the
3. P. Gluck, “A simple method to measure the refractive index of a refractive index of a plate,” Phys. Educ. 31, 17 (1996).
liquid,” Phys. Educ. 46, 253 (2011).

The Physics Teacher ◆ Vol. 50, Februrary 2012 355

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