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Chapter 27: Q93PE (page 1000)

A scuba diver sees light reflected from the water’s surface. At what angle will this light be completely polarized?

Short Answer

Expert verified

The angle is \({53.1^\circ }\).

Step by step solution

01

 Step 1: Definition of polarisation

The term polarised refers to a medium that shows polarisation.

02

Finding the angle

The equation is used to solve this problem\(\tan \left( {{\theta _b}} \right) = \dfrac{{{n_2}}}{{{n_1}}}\) where \({n_1}\) is the index of reflection for air and for water, is the index of reddfraction for water is \({n_2}\).

\(\begin{aligned}\tan \left( {{\theta _b}} \right) &= \dfrac{{{n_2}}}{{{n_1}}}\\ &= \dfrac{{1.33}}{{1.00}}\\ &= 1.33\end{aligned}\)

Solving for the angle, we get

\(\begin{aligned}{\theta _b} &= {\tan ^{ - 1}}(1.33)\\ &= {53.1^\circ }\end{aligned}\)

Therefore, the angle is \({53.1^\circ }.\)

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Most popular questions from this chapter

Explain what happens to the energy carried by light that it is dimmed by passing it through two crossed polarizing filters.

(a) What is the minimum width of a single slit (in multiples of λ ) that will produce the first minimum for a wavelength λ ? (b) What is its minimum width if it produces 50 minima? (c) 1000 minima?

The \(300 - m\)-diameter Arecibo radio telescope pictured in Figure \(27.28\) detects radio waves with a \(4.00{\rm{ }}cm\) average wavelength.

(a) What is the angle between two just-resolvable point sources for this telescope?

(b) How close together could these point sources be at the \({\rm{2}}\) million light year distance of the Andromeda galaxy?

Figure \(27.28\) A \(305 - m\)-diameter natural bowl at Arecibo in Puerto Rico is lined with reflective material, making it into a radio telescope. It is the largest curved focusing dish in the world. Although \(D\) for Arecibo is much larger than for the Hubble Telescope, it detects much longer wavelength radiation and its difdfraction limit is significantly poorer than Hubble's. Arecibo is still very useful, because important information is carried by radio waves that is not carried by visible light. (credit: Tatyana Temirbulatova, Flickr)

Find the largest wavelength of light falling on double slits separated by 1.20 µm for which there is a first-order maximum. Is this in the visible part of the spectrum?

Can a sound wave in air be polarized? Explain
See all solutions

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