Snell's law

Examples of Snell's law in the following topics:

• The Law of Refraction: Snell's Law and the Index of Refraction

  • The exact mathematical relationship is the law of refraction, or "Snell's Law," which is stated in equation form as:
  • The law of refraction is also called Snell's law after the Dutch mathematician Willebrord Snell, who discovered it in 1621.
  • Snell's experiments showed that the law of refraction was obeyed and that a characteristic index of refraction n could be assigned to a given medium.
  • This video introduces refraction with Snell's Law and the index of refraction.The second video discusses total internal reflection (TIR) in detail. http://www.youtube.com/watch?

• Total Internal Reflection and Fiber Optics

  • The angle of incidence is measured with respect to the normal at the refractive boundary (see diagram illustrating Snell's law).
  • The critical angle $\theta_c$ is given by Snell's law, $n_1\sin\theta_1 = n_2\sin\theta_2$.

• Refraction

  • Essentially, it is a surface phenomenon—mainly in governance to the law of conservation of energy and momentum.
  • Refraction is described by Snell's law, which states that for a given pair of media and a wave with a single frequency, the ratio of the sines of the angle of incidence θ1 and angle of refraction θ2 is equivalent to the ratio of phase velocities (v1/v2) in the two media, or equivalently, to the opposite ratio of the indices of refraction (n2/n1):
  • Formulate the law of conservation of energy and momentum as it is applied to refraction

• Total Polarization

  • Using Snell's law (n1sinθ1 = n2sinθ2), one can calculate the incident angle θ1 = B at which no light is reflected: $n_1 \sin \left( \theta_\mathrm B \right) =n_2 \sin \left( 90^\circ - \theta_\mathrm B \right)=n_2 \cos \left( \theta_\mathrm B \right).

• Physics and Mathematics

  • Johannes Kepler followed Tycho and developed the three laws of planetary motion.
  • Galileo was one of the first modern thinkers to clearly state that the laws of nature are mathematical.
  • Willebrord Snellius found the mathematical law of refraction, now known as Snell's law, in 1621.
  • Subsequently, Descartes showed, by using geometric construction and the law of refraction (also known as Descartes' law), that the angular radius of a rainbow is 42°. 
  • He also independently discovered the law of reflection.

• Federalism and the Civil War: The Dred Scott Decision and Nullification

  • In 1836, Scott was relocated to Fort Snelling, Wisconsin, where slavery was prohibited under the Wisconsin Enabling Act.
  • Scott legally married Harriet Robinson, with the knowledge and consent of Emerson in Fort Snelling.
  • Emerson left Scott and Harriet at Fort Snelling, renting them out for profit.
  • Judge Robert Wells directed the jury to rely on Missouri law to settle the question of Scott's freedom.

• Changing Roles for Women

  • The Women's Army Corps (WAC) recruited 50 Japanese-American and Chinese-American women and sent them to the Military Intelligence Service Language School at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, for training as military translators.
  • Federal law made it difficult to divorce absent servicemen, so the number of divorces peaked when many returned in 1946.

• Gauss's Law

  • Gauss's law is a law relating the distribution of electric charge to the resulting electric field.
  • Gauss's law can be used to derive Coulomb's law, and vice versa.
  • In fact, Gauss's law does hold for moving charges, and in this respect Gauss's law is more general than Coulomb's law.
  • Gauss's law has a close mathematical similarity with a number of laws in other areas of physics, such as Gauss's law for magnetism and Gauss's law for gravity.
  • In fact, any "inverse-square law" can be formulated in a way similar to Gauss's law: For example, Gauss's law itself is essentially equivalent to the inverse-square Coulomb's law, and Gauss's law for gravity is essentially equivalent to the inverse-square Newton's law of gravity.

• Revolutionary Women

  • Deborah Samson, Hannah Snell, and Sally St.

• Common Law

  • Law of the United States was mainly derived from the common law system of English law.
  • At both the federal and state levels, the law of the United States was mainly derived from the common law system of English law , which was in force at the time of the Revolutionary War.
  • American judges, like common law judges elsewhere, not only apply the law, they also make the law.
  • As a result, the laws of any given state invariably differ from the laws of its sister states.
  • Instead, it must be regarded as 50 separate systems of tort law, family law, property law, contract law, criminal law, and so on.