Academic Integrity: tutoring, explanations, and feedback — we don’t complete graded work or submit on a student’s behalf.

I am confused about total internal reflection. I don\'t understandwhy it\'s not

ID: 1672002 • Letter: I

Question

I am confused about total internal reflection. I don't understandwhy it's not always possible. I was looking at the case of lighttraveling from air (where n = 1.00) into water (where n =1.33). Can you please give both a mathematical reason (i.e. based onSnell's Law) and a physical reason (i.e. based on the whip-aroundeffect) why you can never have total internal reflection occur inthis case. Can you please give both a mathematical reason (i.e. based onSnell's Law) and a physical reason (i.e. based on the whip-aroundeffect) why you can never have total internal reflection occur inthis case.

Explanation / Answer

physical reson is to get total internal reflectionlight travels always from denser medium to rarer medium in the above case ligth travel to rarer to densermedium means air to water   so total internalreflection doesnot occurs. from the snell law n1 sinc= n2 sin90 =n2 sinc= n2/n1 for n1> n2 if n1 less than n2 thenc >1 which is an absured result because sine ofthe angle can never greater than one. for n1> n2 if n1 less than n2 thenc >1 which is an absured result because sine ofthe angle can never greater than one.