We're Not Soul-SearchingReflection is probably the simplest property of light for us to understand because we've had good bit of experience with it. Every time we've played pool, looked in a mirror...

Mirrors are odd creatures. We use them every day and we're never really surprised by what we see unless we happen to wake up to a particularly impressive case of bed head. But when we look at mirro...

Most of us have a pretty good idea of what reflection is, even before learning about it in physics. We don't have that luck with refraction. Although refraction happens around us all of the time, w...

Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, and Greeks, all had a sense of basic optics. That means we have been playing with lenses for a long time. A more specialized form of lenses, spectacles appeared arou...

1. Don't forget about the normal for refraction. It may be more intuitive to think about angles of incidence and reflection relative to the object surface, but that kind of thinking will lead to so...

Reflection1. What is specular reflection?2. What is diffuse reflection? 3. What type of reflection makes objects appear shiny? 4. What does the law of reflection say? 5. Draw a light ray reflecting...