SBA #:4

Date:

Skills Assessed: AI

Title: Refraction of Light

Aim: To investigate the relationship between the angle of incidence and the corresponding angle

of refraction for glass block.

Apparatus: plain paper, protractor, ruler, rectangular glass block, pencil, three optical pins,

pin board, 4 thumb tacks.

Diagram:

Refraction of Wave through a Glass Block

Procedure: -

1.A sheet of paper was pinned onto a board .

2.The glass block was placed in the middle of the paper and the outline of it was drawn with a

pencil.

3. The protractor was used to draw a normal in the middle of the long side of the block.

4. The intersection of the normal and glass block was labelled as point O.

5. The protractor was used to measure and draw the angles of incidence, i, of 10°, 20°, up to

60° .The lines were extended to the edge of the paper.

6.Two pins (A and B) were placed upright on the 10o line, so that A was as close to the block as

possible and B was as close to the edge of the paper as possible.

7. Through the glass block of the images of A and B, tilt your head in the position where the

image of B is directly behind the image of A.

8. A pin was placed close to the block so that it appeared to be in line with the images A and B.

9. A fourth pin D was placed close to the edge of the page, so that it was in line with C and the

images of A and B.
10.The pins were removed and an x was placed over the holes for pins C and D that have the

correct alignment. The block was removed as well.

11. A line was drawn through the pinholes and was extended back to the glass block (point R).

This represented the emergent ray.

12. Point O to point R were connected and drawn in a refracted ray. Arrows on incident and

emergent rays indicating the direction in which the light travels were also drawn.

13. A protractor was used to measure the angle of refraction, θ2, and its corresponding angle of

incidence, θ1 were recorded.

14, The procedure was repeated for all the angles of incidence drawn.

Data Collected: Draw a table showing the values of θ1, θ2, sin θ1 and sin θ2.

TABLE SHOWING THE VALUES OF θ1, θ2, sin θ1 AND sin θ2.

θ1 θ2 sin θ1 sin θ2

10° 5° 0.17 0.09

20° 12° 0.34 0.21

30° 20° 0.5 0.34

40° 28° 0.64 0.47

50° 32° 0.77 0.53

60° 37° 0.87 0.60

a) Plot a graph of sin θ1 (y- axis) against sin θ2 (x- axis)

b) What is the connection between the gradient and the refractive index, n? The gradient of the

graph of sin i against sin r shows how much the light is bent in the denser medium. This

gradient is the value of the refractive index, n of a medium.

c) Use your graph to find the refractive index of glass.

x= 0.35 y=0.50

refractive index= gradient

0.50/0.35= 1.428/ 1.43

d) Does your graph show proportionality? Justify your answer

Yes, the graph is directly proportional as sin θ2 increases so does sin θ1. Also, it goes through

the origin.

e) From your graph, find the value of the angle of refraction when the angle of incidence is 25°.

36°

f) Given that n =1/sin co, where co is the critical angle of glass, calculate the value of the critical

angle of glass.

Conclusion: To conclude,the sine angle of incidence is directly proportional to the sine angle of

refraction.