Encyclopedia > Critical angle

  Article Content

Critical angle

Critical angle: In geometric optics, at a refractive boundary, the smallest angle of incidence at which total internal reflection occurs.

Note 1: The angle of incidence is measured with respect to the normal at the refractive boundary.

Note 2: The critical angle is given by sin-1(n1/n2) (<- something like this, someone verify please) where θc is the critical angle, n 1 is the refractive index of the less dense medium, and n 2 is the refractive index of the denser medium.

Note 3: The incident ray is in the denser medium.

Note 4: If the incident ray is precisely at the critical angle, the refracted ray is tangent to the boundary at the point of incidence.

Source: from Federal Standard 1037C and from MIL-STD-188



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Bullying

... In Classical Antiquity[?] it did not always have inherently negative implications, it merely designated anyone who assumed power for any period of time without a legitimate ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 21.5 ms