In this lab report the aim of this experiment was to find out the refractive index of “Mystery A” and “Mystery B”. As Snell’s law states that as light passes or travels from one medium to another, it refracts or it bends. The prediction of the amount of bend is given by the law of refraction. Snell’s law is also known as the law of refraction which was named after Willobrord Snell in 1602.Like with the case of reflection, Refraction also involves the angle of refracted ray and the angle of incident ray which it makes with the normal to the surface. Snell’s law states that angle of refraction and the angle of incidence follow an equation: n 1 Sin(θ) = n 2 Sin(θ).
Where “n” can be defined as a medium. Different medium’s have different refractive index. In this case “n1 sin(θ)” can be defined as the angle of incidence and ” n 2 Sin(θ)” can be defined as the angle of refraction. Where “n1” and “n2” are different mediums.This can be shown in FIG:1.
FIG 1: Shows the angle of incidence and the angle of refraction. Moving on with the experiment in task 1 n1 was used as glass and n2 was used as Mystery box A, in task 2 n1 was set to be air and n2 was set to be Mystery B and in the third task both the results were taken and refractive index was then calculated.
Materials and methods In this experiment there were three tasks to perform, the materials used for this experiment as it was visual a light ray was used which could be switched on and switched by pressing the red button, different mediums were given from which for every task different mediums were used, a protractor and a normal drawn on the surface was used. In task 1 glass was selected as n1 and Mystery A was selected as n2. In task 2 air was selected as n1 and Mystery B was selected as n2. In task 3 Mystery A and Mystery B were used to calculate the refractive index .
