{"id":132,"date":"2013-12-29T12:15:50","date_gmt":"2013-12-29T12:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/soundwaves\/?page_id=132"},"modified":"2014-01-24T12:29:37","modified_gmt":"2014-01-24T12:29:37","slug":"3-refraction","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/soundwaves\/wave-interaction\/3-refraction\/","title":{"rendered":"Refraction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This animation has been created to illustrate the phenomenon of wave refraction. Refraction of a wave occurs when a wave passes from one medium to another in which it has a different speed.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/soundwaves\/files\/2013\/12\/refracter.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-133\" alt=\"refracter\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/soundwaves\/files\/2013\/12\/refracter.gif\" width=\"460\" height=\"338\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If a wave crosses a boundary between two media 1 and 2 in which the wave speeds are <em>v<\/em><sub>1<\/sub> and <em>v<\/em><sub>2<\/sub> respectively, then the ratio <em>v<\/em><sub>1<\/sub>\/<em>v<\/em><sub>2<\/sub> obeys Snell&#8217;s law of refraction:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>v<\/em><sub>1<\/sub>\/<em>v<\/em><sub>2<\/sub> = sin \u03b8<sub>1<\/sub>\/sin \u03b8<sub>2<\/sub> = \u03bb<sub>1<\/sub>\/\u03bb<sub>2<\/sub><\/p>\n<p>where \u03b8<sub>1<\/sub> and \u03b8<sub>2<\/sub> are the angles made by the waves and the normal to the boundary (the dashed line in the animation) in media 1 and 2 respectively. The symbols \u03bb<sub>1<\/sub> and \u03bb<sub>2<\/sub> correspond to the wavelength in the media 1 and 2 respectively.<\/p>\n<p>This example shows that by moving from a medium with high wave speed to a medium with low wave speed, waves are refracted towards the normal. When going from a medium with low wave speed to a medium with high wave speed, it will be refracted away from the normal as you can see by imagining this animation running backwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This animation has been created to illustrate the phenomenon of wave refraction. Refraction of a wave occurs when a wave passes from one medium to another in which it has a different speed. If a wave crosses a boundary between two media 1 and 2 in which the wave speeds are v1 and v2 respectively, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75333,"featured_media":0,"parent":50,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-132","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/soundwaves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/soundwaves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/soundwaves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/soundwaves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75333"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/soundwaves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/soundwaves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/soundwaves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/132\/revisions\/331"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/soundwaves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/50"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/soundwaves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}