• Question: Is there anything except a prism that I can use to cause refraction in the classroom?

    Asked by 468ghtg33 to Dervil, Moises, Pramod, Saoirse, Stephen on 7 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Dervil Cody

      Dervil Cody answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      Refraction is defined as the bending of light (it also happens with sound, water and other waves) as it passes from one transparent/clear substance into another. So actually, lots of things can cause refraction besides prisms, including mirrors, lenses and water.
      Prisms are particularly cool because they cause dispersion of light, meaning they break the white light up into it’s component colours as a result of refraction. There are other things that can cause dispersion like diffraction gratings, here’s a cool image:

    • Photo: Stephen Davitt

      Stephen Davitt answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      Like Dervil said, refraction is the bending of light so anything clear that light can pass through can cause refraction such as the windows, bottles of water, glass etc…

      Now if you mean diffraction when white light splits us into the different colours or the ‘rainbow effect’ this is slightly more tricky you can use whats called a diffraction grating which is lots of small slits REALLY close together some we have have over 1200 slits in just 1mm!

      A cool one is you can use a CD to get the same effect! the back of a CD has lines where the information is stored and this also acts as a diffraction grating! So if you reflect light using the back of a CD you’ll get diffraction too!

    • Photo: Dr. Pramod Kumar

      Dr. Pramod Kumar answered on 8 Nov 2016:

      The bending of a light as it crosses the boundary into a different medium is determined by its refractive index. of course one can see the refraction in the classroom with Glass of water except a prism. Put the coin in the glass and see the bending of light.

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