Nora Elsworth

3/20/2024
Investigating Reflection and Refraction

The objective of this laboratory experiment was to show how light is reflected and refracted.

Materials:

1. Mirror
2. Sheet of paper
3. Pencil
4. Laser
5. Protractor
6. Container of water

Procedure: For reflection you place a plain mirror along the centerline of a sheet of paper, and
place a dot to represent the tip of the object off axis. A laser is used to generate a ray passing
through the tip of the object in some direction. Use a pencil to trace both the incident and
reflected rays. Send other rays though the dot at other angles and trace those rays too. You will
be able to see that the rays diverge from a point behind the mirror. Trace the reflected rays back
behind the mirror to locate the image point. Measure to see if P equals Q. For refraction use a
protractor to measure off some angles relative to the vertical axis and sketch lines. Place your
container of water with the flat end interface along the horizontal axis. Shine the laser beam
along each of the sketched lines and trace the emergent beam when it exits the water. Both the
incident and refracted angles are shown. Trace emergent rays for each of the incident angles
and measure the incident and refracted angles relative to the vertical axis.

data:

Conclusion:
We wanted to confirm Snell's law and the law of reflection. We did this by analyzing the slopes
on the graphs we collected for each medium. The first set of graphs showed a low percentage
of error, indicating that the angle of incidence and the angle of refraction were equal. The
second graph further supported Snell's law. We also used the concept of critical angle to
calculate the indexes of refraction.