June 17, 2002 - June 21, 2002
During the third week, I began some research on trying to understand in depth, why the light bends the way that it does. I worked on developing a site that gives an indepth look at all of the theories behind index of refraction.
How They Indexed The Refraction
I worked on some diagrams that described the prism method for measuring the index of refraction. The prism method takes advantage of the special property of find a minimum angle of deviation. In a minimum angle of deviation the angle between the incident ray and the prism will be equal to the angle between the emerging ray and the other end of the prism. This was the method that was described in detail in my previous week. I now show a description of it. The Prism Method
I am also currently doing some more research online and at the Physics Library here at Stony Brook, to gather some more information to give me some ideas for things I can do now that I am developing a clearer understanding of the nature of light.
My goals for the rest of the week:
There are a few things that I want to accomplish this week now that I have organized my project. It is no longer a sketch but more like the clear planned out drawing that I spent most of the day today drawing!
1. Try to include something on my website that gives more information about critical angles. Try to describe how I can use this in my project.2. Make an attempt at measuring the index of refraction of water in the empty fishtank. After I understand that, I can attempt making some measurements with the other fishtank.
3. I was searching for books in the library dealing with the electromagnetic theories of how light refracts in medias. What about medias that causes various indexes. Upon reading this I learned about a new topic called non-linear optics.
Some more people also came into the lab this week. Peter had worked ona project the previous summer and is going to also continue with Waldo on a project dealing with optical tweezers. Alex was here for the first time.
Here is a website that I started to make today that compares the method that I have been learning about which is a more mathematical approach to measuring the index of refraction. Here I describe some things I learned about refractometry.