As light passes through sessions of media of increasing indices of refraction, what happens to its speed?
361651
the speed of light travelling into a medium with a higher refractive index will slow down. if it is travelling into a medium with a lower refractive index, the speed will increase.
42425
The index if refraction (n) of a medium is the ratio of the speed of light in a vacuum to the speed of light in that medium.\n\nn=c/v \nc = speed of light in a vacuum\nv = speed of light in the medium\n\nn is almost always greater than one, as in most cases an electromagnetic wave will travel faster in the vacuum.
642439
I assume that the light enters water through the glass since incidence is less than refracted angle also assuming refrative index of glass as 1.66 and water as 1.33\n\nWhat is the question then ? Also how can light return to where it originates ? That is dependent on the setup.
133450
well, the usual rules of physics at such speed don't apply. so when you turn the headlights, the light will travel from them at approximately the usual speen of light, and i guess you won't notice anything unusual..\nfor more information check the subject at wikipedia. and the following subject: Constant velocity from all reference frames
648382
In the vacuum light can get the high speed.\nAfter that you have gas, liquid an then solid.\nThis is because the density of matter. The more dense the matter is the more athoms there are, making it harder for the light to pass.
1110351
It is the speed of light.\n\nDarkness is gone at the speed of light when light approaches it at speed of light... when the light moves away at the speed, darkness appears at same speed.
1101763
Well....moving water has a different refractive index to still water. So if you can monitor the intensity of color using the color of the light from still water you will see a change in the color when the water is moving. It is then possible to see that movement in the water is taking place. \nThe speed of movement maybe be also indexed as a change in refractive index. \nSo, it would be possible to run some controlled experiments and determine convection of water in some form of useful units.
560586
The speed of light is constant in vacuum.\n\nHowever the athmosphere might slow it down a bit (as it has a refraction index slightly greater than 1)... but that is unsignificant. It will rather lose energy than speed.
675938
The speed that the reflection is moving at is near light speed (186,000 miles a second). The spot we see the reflected light coming from is different as the plane moves across the earth, regardless of how fast or slow the plane is moving.
522376
I believe it DEPENDS on the Frequency of that photon.\nWHITE lite comes into a prism (water droplets) and the\nindividual photos are BENT (refracted) various amounts\ndue to their frequency... thus we get to see the spectrum\n... rainbow... \nSo, yes, a photon going from one medium into another\nwould alter it's path a little at the juncture, \naccording to its frequency...  no "references", \njust my  off-the-cuff reply.  good luck.
1151441
#1: It doesn't. The frequency of a beam of light remains constant regardless of the medium through which it travels, although the wavelength may change.\n#2: Absolutely nothing, for the same reason as #1.\n#3: Not for a mirror. The focal length of a mirror is determined by reflection, not refraction, and the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence, regardless of the medium.\n#4: 1:1. The velocity of light does not depend on wavelength*\n\n*okay, for some materials the index of refraction, and therefore the speed of light in that material, depends slightly on wavelength, which is why a prism can be used to separate light into its various colors. However, the question did not specify a particular medium, so I assumed it meant in vacuum, where the velocities of all light rays are indeed the same.
587311
All these produce a change in path of incident ray of light but reasons and effects are different in each:\n\nDiffraction -- bending of light round the edges and corners, while passing through slits/holes/wires in the same medium. produces a pattern of alternate bands/fringes ( minimum/maximum intensity). they are maximum intense at the center of the path and fades of - on both the sides\nshape of bands/fringes depends on the shape of obstacle(hole/slit/wire/edge)\n\nRefraction -  bending of light , when it passes from one medium to another of a different refractive index, no pattern produced. no change in the intensity if the second medium does not reflect/absorb part of incident light.\n\nReflection: Change of path of light ray due to reflection, i.e the reflected ray is in the same medium as the second medium simply does neither absorbs nor allows it to pass through it. No change in the intensity and no pattern produced.\n\ndispersion -  splitting of incident lightray into its constituent wavelengths, when it passes through a medium (like prism). every wavelength gets deviated from incident path through a different angle (angle of dispersion), hence you can see different colors of visible light.
759477
because light, when passing through a different medium with greater index of refraction(the greater the index of refraction, the slower the speed), travels at a slower rate.... and since the prism has a greater index of refraction compared to air (the first medium), light is deflected towards the normal (defined as the perpendicular line with respect ot the air-prism interface), and not exactly to the thicker part in general.....
592518
This question comes up very regularly. If you do a search you will find it has been answered dozens of times in the past few months.\n\nIgnore what the previous poster said, he is completely incorrect. The speed of light is an absolute constant. It doesn't matter what speed you are travelling at the light will always be travelling away from you at the same speed: the speed of light.\n\nThe freaky part is that the light from your headlights would seem to be travelling away form you at the speed of light (C), but to an observer who was sitting still the light would also appears to be travelling away from them at the speed of light.  How can that happen? Well it's one of the tricky bits of relativity, but part of the solution lies in understanding that although light never slows down or speeds up relative to any observer it does change frequency.\n\nSo to you the light from your headlights will look quite normal, but to someone sitting still your headlights will appear to be emitting x-rays. The light would be invisible to them.\n\nThe corrolary of that is that any light approaching your windshield will be equally shifted into the x-ray part of the spectrum. Although the headlights will be emitting visible light, any time they strike an object and reflect back they will reflect back extremely low frequency light that is invisible to the human eye.\n\n\nSo no, it won't do a damn bit o good to turn on your headlights. That's not because the light won't travel, it will travel just fine. The problem will be that any light that  reflects back off the road will be invisible to the human eye.
323277
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/fast_light.html\n\nhave a look at this website
412289
The definition of the index of refraction for a material (n) is the speed of light in vacuum (c) divided by the speed of light in the material(v) or in equation form;\n                      n = c/v \nSince the speed of light in vacuum is the maximum possible speed then (v) must be smaller than (c), or at the most as large as (c), and the fraction (c/v) must therefore be larger than one because we have a bigger number divided by a smaller number.  Since D is the only fraction larger than one it is the only answer that can possibly be correct.
1148279
light travels at 3 x 10^8 m/s\n\nsound travels at 330 mph \n\nso it takes lot of time for sound to reach us, than light..even though both are produced at the same time...