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What is the Critical Angle and Total Internal Reflection?
1. When a light ray emerges
from glass into air,
it is refracted and bends away from the
normal, so i < r.
2. As i is made bigger, the
refracted ray
gets closer and closer to the surface
of the glass.
When i equals the critical
angle, the refracted
ray
is just touching the glass surface.
The critical
angle is different for
different materials.
For glass it is about 42 degrees.
Total
internal reflection happens when
i is bigger than the critical
angle
(see the next page).
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