DELHI PUBLIC SCHOOL

NACHARAM Secunderabad

SUBJECT: PHYSICS HUMAN EYE AND THE COLORFUL WORLD CLASS : X

IGHT : REFLECTION AND REFRACTION

 Structure of eye:
• Human eye is spherical in shape of diameter abut 2.3cm.
• Light enters the eye through a thin membrane called Cornea, which is transparent and
bulged on the front side.
• Most of the refraction for the light rays entering the eye occur on the outer surface of
the cornea.
• The crystalline lens provides the finer adjustment of focal length.
• Iris is a dark, muscular diaphragm that controls the size of the pupil.
• The pupil regulates and controls the amount of light entering the eye.
• The eye lens forms a real and inverted image of the object on the retina.
• Retina is a delicate membrane having enormous number of light sensitive cells.
• The light sensitive cells get activated upon illumination and generate electrical
signals.
• These signals are sent to the brain via the optic nerves.
• The brain interprets these signals and finally processes the information helping us to
perceive the objects as they are.

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 Power of Accommodation: The ability of the eye lens to adjust its focal length
in order to view nearby and faraway objects clearly is called power of
accommodation.
 Least Distance Of Distinct Vision
• The minimum distance at which objects can be seen most distinctly, without strain is
called Least Distance of Distinct Vision (LDDV)
• For a young adult with a normal vision, the near point is about 25cm.
• The farthest point upto which the eye can see objects clearly is called far point of
the eye. It is infinity for a normal eye.
 Cataract:- Sometimes, the crystalline lens of people of old age becomes milky and
cloudy. This condition is called cataract. It is possible to restore the vision through a
cataract surgery.
 Persistence of Vision:- The images of the objects that we view remain on the retina for
1/16 th of a second.
 Defects of Vision:
• Sometimes the eye may gradually lose its power of accommodation which will enable
us to lose proper vision of viewing nearby and far away objects.
 Myopia:- It is also known as near-sightedness.
• A person with myopia can see nearby objects clearly but cannot see distant objects
clearly.
• A person with this defect has his far away point as less than infinity.
• This happens because-
• Excessive curvature of the eye lens.
• Elongation of the eyeball
• High converging power of the eye lens or short focal length

A concave lens of suitable power can be used to correct the defect.

:
 Hypermetropia A person with Hypermetropia eye cannot see nearby objects but
can see distant objects clearly.
 The near point of such defect is more than 25cm
 This happens because of-
i) Low converging power of lens or more focal length
ii) Eyeball is too small
 Convex lens of proper focal length is used to correct this defect.
 :
 Presbyopia This is that defect of vision due to which an old person cannot see
nearby objects clearly. This happens due to the gradual weakening of ciliary muscles
and diminishing flexibility of the eye lens.
 Note- Sometimes, a person may suffer from both myopia and Hypermetropia. Such
people use bifocal lens where the lower part of the lens is convex and the upper part is
concave lens .

 Dispersion of light: The splitting of white light into seven constituent colours when
the light passes through a prism.

 Spectrum: The band of seven colours obtained on a screen due to dispersion of white
light.
 Note- Dispersion of white light occurs because the lights of different colours bend
through different angles while passing through a glass prism.
 Recombination of spectrum into white light:
 Place a prism P1 on a table
 Take another similar prism P2 and place it by the side of first prism in inverted
position.
 Allow a beam of light to pass through P1, the light is dispersed and forms a spectrum
on P2.
 This spectrum enters P2 and comes out of P2 as white light.

 Angle Of Minimum Deviation:

 The peculiar shape of the prism makes the emergent ray bend at an angle to the
direction of the incident ray ,whichis known as angle of deviation.
(OR)
 In a prism ,the angle of deviation decreases with increase in the angle of incidence
upto a particular angle, which is called as minimum angle of deviation.
˪i + ˪e = ˪a + ˪d
 Note : When white light passess through the prism split into seven colours
whereas when white light passes through the glass slab does not produce seven
colours due to the peculiar shape of the prism as glass slab is a combination of
two triangular prisms.

 How is a rainbow formed?

• A rainbow is a natural spectrum which appears in the sky after rain, it always forms
opposite to the direction of the sun.
• The water droplets act like small prisms.
• They refract and disperse the incident sunlight, reflect it internally and finally refract
it again when it comes out of the raindrop.
• Due to the dispersion of light and internal reflection, different colours reach the
observer’s eye in the form of a rainbow.
  ATMOSPHERIC REFRACTION
When the light rays pass through the atmosphere having layers of different densities and
refractive indices, then refraction of light takes place. This refraction of light by the earth’s
atmosphere is called “atmospheric refraction”

 Why do stars twinkle?

This is due to atmospheric refraction.
The ray of light from a star suffer refraction at each layer of atmosphere and bend slightly
towards the normal following a curved path to reach the observer.
This ray of light keeps fluctuating from its mean position making the star twinkle.

 Why don’t planets twinkle?

The planets are much closer to the earth and are thus considered as extended sources of light.
The total variation in the amount of light entering our eye from all individual point sized
sources will average out to zero. Thereby, nullifying the twinkling effect.

 Advanced sunlight and delayed sunset:

The sun is visible to us about two minutes before the actual sunrise and two minutes after
the actual sunset because of atmospheric refraction. The air near the earth is called denser
than at higher altitudes. The rays undergo continuous refraction and bend towards the
normal making the sun appear higher than at the horizon.
  Tyndall effect: When a beam of light strikes fine particles of the atmosphere, the
path of the beam becomes visible. This phenomenon of scattering of light by colloidal
particles gives rise to tyndall effect.
 Note-
The colour of scattered light depends on the size of the scattering particles.
When light strikes very fine particles, it scatters colours of shorter wavelength (blues)
If the size of the scattering particles is large enough, the scattered light may even
appear white.
 Why is the colour of the clear sky blue?
The molecules of air and other fine particles of the atmosphere have smaller wavelengths
than the wavelength of visible light. These are more effective in scattering lights of
shorter wavelengths. Therefore, the scattered blue light enters our eyes.
 Note-
 If the earth had no atmosphere, they would not have been any scattering making the
sky look dark.
 The sky appears dark to the passengers flying at very high altitudes as scattering is not
prominent at greater heights.
 Danger signals are red in colour as red has longer wavelength and is least scattered by
fog or smoke.

 Red colour of the sun during sunrise and sunset:

During sunrise and sunset, the sun is near the horizon, the sun rays have to travel a longer
distance through the atmosphere to reach us where most of the blue light gets scattered and
the light reaching us would be of red and orange colours.
Whereas, during noon time, the sun is overhead, the light coming from the sun has to travel
relatively shorter distance to reach us, where only a little of blue light gets scattered showing
the sun as white in colour.

Experimental setup for the verification of scattering of light in colloidal

solution:
• Place a strong source of white light at the front of the converging lens,
Allow the light beam to pass through a transparent glass tank containing
 clean water. In about 2l of clean water in the tank and add 1 to 2 ml of
concentrated H2SO4 acid and 200g of thiosulphate(hypo).
• Allow the beam of light to pass through a circular, a hole made of a
cardboard. Obtain a sharp image of the circular hole on screen by using
converging lens.
• In two to three minutes, we will find fine sulphur particles precipitating
and we can see blue light from the three sides of the glass stand, due to
scattering of short wavelengths by colloidal sulphur particles.
• The colour of the transmitted light will firstly be orange-red colour and
then turns into bright crimson red colour

Numerical:
1.A person with myopic eye has his far away point as 80cm. What is the nature and power of
lens required to correct the defect?
2. A person with myopia has his far away point as 1.6m Find the power and nature of the lens
to be used?

3. The near point of Hypermetropic eye is 1m. Find the power and nature of the lens to be
used.
4.A person needs a lens of power -3.5D for far and 0.5D in the near vision. Find the focal
length of far and near vision.
5.A person needs a lens of power 5.5 dioptre for correcting his distant vision. For correcting
his near vision he needs a power of +1.5 dioptre. What is the focal length of the lens required
for correcting (i) distant vision, and (ii) near viion?
sol. The focal length of a lens is given by