Mirrors

Teaching children about reflection is as simple as using a mirror and a laser pointer. Have one of the children stand a few feet away from you holding a small mirror. Turn on the laser pointer and point the laser at the mirror. Have the other children look for the red laser dot around the room. When they find it, have the child holding the mirror tilt it slightly. Now turn off the lights in the room and bang two chalk erasers together to create a dusty environment so the kids can see the path of the laser change. Explain to the children how the laser is a beam of light just like the light beams that come from the sun.
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Water Refraction
Have the children gather around your desk or a table and then take out a standard pencil and a glass of water. Have the children look at the pencil and watch it closely as you place it into the glass of water. They will see that the pencil appears to be broken. Take this opportunity to explain how light travels 25 percent slower through water than it does through the air. Because of this, the image in the water is refracted (bent). Now take a few pebbles out and place them behind the glass of water. Have children take turns trying to pick up the pebbles while they look through the glass. This is a concrete way to show them that light bends.
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Prisms
A simple way to look at properties of refraction is by using prisms. Distribute several prisms to your kids so they can experiment with them. Have them place the prisms near different light sources to produce rainbows. Explain how sunlight and incandescent bulbs have the entire visible spectrum in them and that a prism causes different colors of light to refract at different rates. This can lead to several different directions depending on the age of the children. Consider a discussion of ROY G. BIV (Red Orange Yellow Green Glue Indigo Violet); talk about the visible spectrum and what infrared and ultraviolet are; or start a simple discussion on the difference between a red laser light and sunlight.
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Refraction of waves involves a change in the direction of waves as they pass from one medium to another. Refraction, or bending of the path of the waves, is accompanied by a change in speed and wavelength of the waves. So if the media (or its properties) are changed, the speed of the wave is changed. Thus, waves passing from one medium to another will undergo refraction. Refraction of sound waves is most evident in situations in which the sound wave passes through a medium with gradually varying properties. For example, sound waves are known to refract when traveling over water. Even though the sound wave is not exactly changing media, it is traveling through a medium with varying properties; thus, the wave will encounter refraction and change its direction. Since water

has a moderating affect upon the temperature of air, the air directly above the water tends to be cooler than the air far above the water. Sound waves travel slower in cooler air than they do in warmer air. For this reason, the portion of the wavefront directly above the water is slowed down, while the portion of the wavefronts far above the water speeds ahead. Subsequently, the direction of the wave changes, refracting downwards towards

Refraction: How Salty is the Sea?

Jim Beasley and Laura Blackburn, Educators, Mathematics & Science Center

Developed with funding from the Mathematics & Science Center

Major Understanding

Refraction refers to the bending of light as it moves through substances of different densities. Light slows down and bends as it moves from one substance into a denser substance. For example, when light moves through a glass windowpane it refracts. Refraction occurs because air is less dense than glass.

Salinity is a very important characteristic of water. The amount of salt in a body of water determines the types of plants and animals that live there. From the James River to the Chesapeake Bay and then into the Atlantic Ocean there are great changes in the salinity of the water. This salinity affects the density of water.

The greater the salinity of water, the greater the density, and the more it will refract or bend light. A Salinity Refractometer is an instrument designed to measure the salinity of water in percent. This is determined by the degree of refraction as light passes through samples of water.

Refraction of Light through a Glass Slab

Let us now perform an experiment and find out how light gets refracted when it is incident on a rectangular glass slab.

Place a rectangular glass slab on a white sheet of paper fixed on a drawing board. Trace the boundary ABCD of the glass slab. Remove the glass slab. Draw an incident ray IO on AB. Draw the normal at point of incidence (NN1 through O) Fix two pins P and Q on the incident ray IO. Place the glass slab within its boundary ABCD. Looking from the other side of the glass slab fix two pins R and S such that your eye and the feet of all the pins are in one straight line. Remove the glass slab and the pins. Mark the pin points P1, P2, P3 and P4. Join OO1.It is the refracted ray. Measure are the angle of incidence, angle of refraction and angle of emergence respectively.

Extend O1E backwards. The emergent ray is parallel to the incident ray.

Refraction through a Glass Slab The above experiment shows that

When a ray light is passing from air to glass, that is, from a rarer medium to a denser medium, the refracted ray bends towards the normal drawn at the point of incidence. In this case But when the ray of light is passing from glass to air, that is, from a denser medium to a rarer medium the refracted ray bends away from the normal. In this case The emergent ray, O1E which is nothing but the refracted ray emerging out of the glass slab is parallel to the incident ray. This means that the refracted ray (emergent ray) has been displaced from its original path by a distance XY. This displacement is referred to as lateral displacement.