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KEY CONCEPT

Lenses form images by

refracting light.
BEFORE, you learned NOW, you will learn
• Waves can refract when • How a material medium can
they move from one refract light
medium to another • How lenses control refraction
• Refraction changes the • How lenses produce images
direction of a wave

VOCABULARY EXPLORE Refraction

lens p. 601
How does material bend light?
focal length p. 603
PROCEDURE MATERIALS
• clear plastic cup
1 Place the pencil in the cup, as shown in
• pencil
the photograph. Look at the cup from the
• water
side so that you see part of the pencil
• mineral oil
through the cup.
2 Fill the cup one-third full with water and
repeat your observations.
3 Gently add oil until the cup is two-thirds full. After
the oil settles into a separate layer, observe.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

• How did the appearance of the pencil change when
you added the water? the oil?
• What might explain these changes?

A medium can refract light.

When sunlight strikes a window, some of the light rays reflect off the
surface of the glass. Other rays continue through the glass, but their
direction is slightly changed. This slight change in direction is called
refraction. Refraction occurs when a wave strikes a new medium—such
as the window—at an angle other than 90° and keeps going forward in
a slightly different direction.
Refraction occurs because one side of the wave reaches the new
medium slightly before the other side does. That side changes speed,
while the other continues at its previous speed, causing the wave to turn.

Check Your Reading How does the motion of a light wave change when it refracts?

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Refraction of Light
COMBINATION NOTES
Sketch the ways light is
refracted when it moves
into a denser medium and
into a thinner medium.
Recall that waves travel at different speeds in different mediums.
The direction in which a light wave turns depends on whether the
new medium slows the wave down or allows it to travel faster. Like
reflection, refraction is described in terms of an imaginary line—called
the normal—that is perpendicular to the new surface. If the medium
slows the wave, the wave will turn toward the normal. If the new
medium lets the wave speed up, the wave will turn away from the
normal. The wave in the diagram below turns toward the normal
as it slows down in the new medium.

air air
(thin) glass (thin)
(dense) 1 Waves moving at an
angle into a denser
medium turn toward
the normal.
1 2
normal 2 Waves moving at an
angle into a thinner
light medium turn away
wave from the normal.

reading tip Light from the Sun travels toward Earth through the near vacuum
A dense medium has more of outer space. Sunlight refracts when it reaches the new medium of
mass in a given volume than
a thin medium.
Earth’s upper atmosphere. Earth’s upper atmosphere is relatively thin
and refracts light only slightly. Denser materials, such as water and
light
glass, refract light more.
By measuring the speed of light in different materials and compar-
water ing this speed to the speed of light in a vacuum, scientists have been
droplet able to determine exactly how different materials refract light. This
knowledge has led to the ability to predict and control refraction,
which is the basis of much optical technology.

color Refraction and Rainbows

spectrum Light passing through
a droplet of water is
refracted twice, forming
a color spectrum.
You’ve seen rainbows in the sky after a rainstorm or
hovering in the spray of a sprinkler. Rainbows are
caused by refraction and reflection of light through
spherical water drops, which act as prisms. Just as a
prism separates the colors of white light, producing
the color spectrum, each water drop separates the
wavelengths of sunlight to produce a spectrum.
Only one color reaches your eye from each drop.
Red appears at the top of a rainbow because it is
coming from higher drops, while violet comes from
lower drops.

600 Unit 4: Waves, Sound, and Light

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Shape determines how lenses form images.

When you look at yourself in a flat mirror, you see your image clearly,
without distortions. Similarly, when you look through a plain glass reading tip

window, you can see what is on the other side clearly. Just as curved Distort means to change
mirrors distort images, certain transparent mediums called lenses alter the shape of something
by twisting or moving the
what you see through them. A lens is a clear optical tool that refracts parts around.
light. Different lenses refract light in different ways and form images
useful for a variety of purposes.

Convex and Concave Lenses

Like mirrors, lenses can be convex or concave. A convex lens is curved
outward; a concave lens is curved inward. A lens typically has two
sides that are curved, as shown in the illustration below.
Convex Lens Concave Lens
focal
point

principal axis

A convex lens causes parallel light A concave lens causes parallel light
rays to meet at a focal point. rays to spread out.

Convex Parallel light rays passing through a convex lens are refracted reminder

inward. They meet at a focal point on the other side of the lens. The The focal point is the point
at which parallel light rays
rays are actually refracted twice—once upon entering the lens and meet after being reflected
once upon leaving it. This is because both times they are entering a or refracted.
new medium at an angle other than 90 degrees. Rays closest to the
edges of the lens are refracted most. Rays passing through the center
of the lens—along the principal axis, which connects the centers of
the two curved surfaces—are not refracted at all. They pass through
to the same focal point as all rays parallel to them.
Concave Parallel light rays that pass through a concave lens are
refracted outward. As with a convex lens, the rays are refracted twice.
Rays closest to the edges of the lens are refracted most; rays at the very
center of the lens pass straight through without being deflected.
Because they are refracted away from each other, parallel light rays
passing through a concave lens do not meet.
Check Your Reading Compare what happens to parallel light rays striking a concave
mirror with those striking a concave lens.

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How a Convex Lens Forms an Image

A convex lens forms an image by
refracting light rays. Light rays
reflected from an object are refracted ray A
when they enter the lens and again focal
point
when they leave the lens. They meet
to form the image.

focal lengths
1 Light rays reflect off the penguin in all
directions, and many enter the lens. Here a
single ray (A) from the top of the penguin
enters the lens and is refracted downward.

ray B point
C

2 Another light ray (B) from the top of the

point
penguin passes through the lens at the bottom D
and meets the first ray at point C. All of the
rays from the top of the penguin passing
through the lens meet at this point.

3 All of the light rays from the bottom of the

penguin meet at a different point (D).
Light rays from all parts of the penguin meet
at corresponding points on the image.

Where do light rays reflected from the middle of the penguin meet?

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Images Formed by Lenses

When light rays from an object pass through a lens, an image of SIMULATION
the object is formed. The type of image depends on the lens and, for CLASSZONE.COM

convex lenses, on the distance between the lens and the object. Work with convex and
concave lenses to form
Notice the distance between the penguin and the lens in the images.
illustration on page 602. The distance is measured in terms of a
focal length, which is the distance from the center of the lens to
the lens’s focal point. The penguin is more than two focal lengths
from the camera lens, which means the image formed is upside
down and smaller.
If the penguin were between one and two focal lengths away from
a convex lens, the image formed would be upside down and larger.
Overhead projectors form this type of image, which is then turned
right side up by a mirror and projected onto a screen for viewing.
Finally, if an object is less than one focal length from a
convex lens, it will appear right side up and larger. In order to
enlarge an object so that you can see details, you hold a mag-
nifying lens close to the object. In the photograph, you see a
face enlarged by a magnifying lens. The boy’s face is less than
one focal length from the lens.
If you look at an object through a concave lens, you’ll see
an image of the object that is right side up and smaller than
the object normally appears. In the case of concave lenses, the
distance between the object and the lens does not make a dif-
ference in the type of image that is formed. In the next section
you’ll see how the characteristics of the images formed by different
lenses play a role in complex optical tools.

When will an image formed by a convex lens be upside down?

KEY CONCEPTS CRITICAL THINKING CHALLENGE

1. What quality of a material
affects how much it refracts
light?
2. How does the curve in a lens
cause it to refract light differ-
ently from a flat piece of glass?
3. How does a camera lens form
an image?
4. Infer You look through a lens
and see an image of a building
upside down. What type of
lens are you looking through?
5. Make a Model Draw the
path of a light ray moving at
an angle from air into water.
Write a caption to explain
the process.
6. Study the diagram on the
opposite page. Describe the
light rays that would pass
through the labeled focal
point. Where are they coming
from, and how are they related
to each other?

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