Chapter 20: Refraction and Lenses

The ray nature of light is used to explain how light refracts at planar and curved surfaces; Snell's law and refraction principles are used to explain a variety of real-world phenomena; refraction principles are combined with ray diagrams to explain why lenses produce images of objects.

Lesson 1: Refraction at a Boundary

  1. Boundary Behavior
  2. Refraction and Sight
  3. The Cause of Refraction
  4. Optical Density and Light Speed
  5. The Direction of Bending
  6. If I Were an Archer Fish

Lesson 2: The Mathematics of Refraction (Snell's Law)

  1. The Angle of Refraction
  2. Snell's Law
  3. Ray Tracing and Problem-Solving
  4. Determination of n Values

Lesson 3: Total Internal Reflection

  1. Boundary Behavior Revisited
  2. Total Internal Reflection
  3. The Critical Angle

Lesson 4: Interesting Refraction Phenomena

  1. Dispersion of Light by Prisms
  2. Rainbow Formation
  3. Mirages

Lesson 5: Image Formation by Lenses

  1. The Anatomy of a Lens
  2. Refraction by Lenses
  3. Image Formation Revisited
  4. Converging Lenses - Ray Diagrams
  5. Converging Lenses - Object-Image Relations
  6. Diverging Lenses - Ray Diagrams
  7. Diverging Lenses - Object-Image Relations
  8. The Mathematics of Lenses

Lesson 6: The Eye

  1. The Anatomy of the Eye
  2. Image Formation and Detection
  3. The Wonder of Accommodation
  4. Farsightedness and its Correction
  5. Nearsightedness and its Correction
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