Refraction and Reflection experiments (4.2)

Question 1

What equipment is needed for the refraction experiment?

Answer 1

glass block, paper, ray box, protractor

Question 2

How do you find the absolute refractive index of a material using refraction?

Answer 2

1) Place a glass block on a piece of paper and draw an outline
2) Draw on a normal using a protractor to get the 45* angle
3) Use ray box to shine beam of light at an angle into the box, trace path
4) Measure the angles of incidence and refraction
5) repeat to get 6 different angles
6) calculate the sin for all of these
7) as n1 is in air, it is equal to 1
8) So plot a scatter graph of sin(i) against sin(r), the gradient of a line of best fit is the refractive index