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Why when you look at a rock under water it appears to be in a different position to where it is?
Stephanieannbacarro
It is because the speed of light is not the same in all materials. When light travels from water into air it speeds up.
Imaging you're in a car and you drive into a big puddle of water, that hits both front wheels at the same time. The whole car slows down as if you had applied the brakes. You still travel in the same direction, just slower. If you were standing directly over the rock you were looking at you would see the rock exactly where it is.
This hasn't yet answered the question. The tricky bit comes when you are not standing directly over the rock, but slightly to one side. Imagine a load of light rays coming from the rock at the same time. If you are stood to one side, some of the rays will reach the air sooner than others. On the way to the eye, some spend less time in the water and more time in the air compared to the other light rays. If you could now draw a line across the tops of all the light rays, the wave front would appear to turn towards the surface of the water.
Imagine you are in a car again. This time there is a big puddle near the kerb and only affect the near-side wheel. The wheel near the centre of the road still maintains its original speed, but the kerb-side wheel is slowed down. The effect is to pull the car towards the kerb. I'm sure I'm not the only person who has experienced this in a car.
The relationship between the speed of light in a material, v, and the speed of light in a vacuum, c, is called the refractive index, n.
n = c/v
Light must travel fastest in a vacuum, so c >= v and therefore n >= 1.
If you draw a diagram, the position the rock appears to be at is to do with the angle the light travels through the water at and the angle it travels through the air at. The angles are related to the refractive indices of air and water by Snell's law:
nair Sin Aair = nwater Sin Awater
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