![]() ![]() Hot air tends to be less optically dense than cooler air. ![]() This heated roadway in turn heats the surrounding air, keeping the air just above the roadway at higher temperatures than that day's average air temperature. The role of the sun is to heat the roadway to high temperatures. The appearance of the water is simply an illusion. You could carefully match the perceived location of the water to a roadside object but when you arrive at that object, the puddle of water is still not on the roadway. Instead, the puddle of water appears to be another one-hundred yards in front of you. Of course, when you arrive at the perceived location of the puddle, you recognize that the puddle is not there. As you drive down the roadway, there appears to be a puddle of water on the road several yards (maybe one-hundred yards) in front of the car. Mirages are most commonly observed on sunny days when driving down a roadway. But not every medium is a uniform medium, and the fact that air can sometimes form a non-uniform medium leads to an interesting refraction phenomenon - the formation of mirages.Ī mirage is an optical phenomenon that creates the illusion of water and results from the refraction of light through a non-uniform medium. A uniform medium is the same everywhere from its top boundary to its bottom boundary and from its left boundary to its right boundary. A uniform medium is a medium whose optical density is everywhere the same within the medium. The discussion has presumed that the medium is a uniform medium. It has been mentioned in our discussion that the refraction or bending of light occurs at the boundary between two materials and once a light wave has crossed the boundary it travels in a straight line. The boundary between the glass of a fish tank and the surrounding air or the boundary between the water in a pool and the surrounding air are examples of distinct interfaces between two recognizably different materials. The boundaries that we have been focusing on have been distinct interfaces between two recognizably different materials. As light is transmitted across the boundary from one material to another, there is a change in speed, which causes a change in direction of the light wave. Most of our discussion of refraction in this unit has pertained to the refraction of light at a distinct boundary. ![]()
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