N N N

REFRACTION

Whenever a wave is bounced back into same medium at an interface reflection is said to have
occurred. Transmission of a wave into the second medium at an interface is called refraction.

• Twinkling of stars, appearance of sun before actual sunrise and after actual sunset etc. are
due to atmospheric refraction.

† Rainbow : Rainbows are generated through refraction and reflection of light in small rain
drops. The sun is always behind you when you face a rainbow, and that the center of the circular arc
of the rainbow is in the direction opposite to that of the sun. The rain, of course, is in the direction of
the rainbow i.e. rain drops must be ahead of you and the angle between your line-of-sight and the
sunlight will be 40° – 42°.

† Moon is seen red during total lunar eclipse

Solar radiation will be refracted when passing through the earth's atmosphere. Therefore part of the
sunlight can still reach the shadow of the earth. Besides, the earth atmosphere scatters most of the
blue light , so there will be more red light reaching the moon. The red light will be reflected back to
earth. That is the reason why you can see a red moon rather than total darkness.

ELECTRICITY

† The electrical devices we encounter most often in modern life such as computers, lights and
telephones involve moving charges which we call electric currents.

† Electric Current : We define the electric current, or simply the current, to be the net amount
of positive charge passing per unit time across any section through the conductor in the sense from
the positive toward the negative terminal.

† The SI unit of current is the ampere (A), where 1A = 1 C/s that is, 1A of current is equivalent
to 1C of charge passing through the surface in 1s. In practice, smaller units of current are often used,
such as the milliampere (1mA = 10–3 A) and the microampere (1µA = 10–6 A)

† If the charge on an electron is e and n electrons pass through a point in time t then the total
charge passing through that point will be Q = ne. Therefore the current

I ne where, e = 1.6 × 10–19 coulomb.

† Types of Current

(a) Direct current : The current whose magnitude and direction does not vary with time is called
direct current (dc). The various sources are cells, battery, dc dynamo etc.