Please read the following script from the Earth and Sky radio program. Explain h

Question

Please read the following script from the Earth and Sky radio program. Explain how the law of reflection applies in the two situations cited in this script.

Pillars of Light

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J: This is Earth and Sky, with a question from a listener.

Tape: "Hi there, this is Ron Lubton. I'm a teacher here in Colorado Springs, Colorado. We listen to you on KRCC. The question involves a phenomenon that I see sometimes late at night and usually at the end of snow storms. I've noticed an unusual thing about the town lights within a mile or so. They all seem to cast vertical beams straight up into the sky. These light sources might be porch or streetlights or even horizontally shining automobile head lamps. This effect is subtle, but I've taken time exposure slides of it, and it's quite real...."

Tiny mirrors D: Ron, it sounds like you're talking about light pillars. They're a special kind of light phenomenon that you might see if there are tiny crystals of ice -- with a particular shape -- still floating down after a snowstorm. Ice crystals have a couple of different shapes -- for example, they can be like little columns or needles, longer than they are wide. But the ice crystals needed to create light pillars are more like tiny disks. They're hexagonal in shape, with flat surfaces -- and they tend to fall without fluttering. They fall with their flat faces parallel to the ground -- and so they're like tiny mirrors that could reflect those porchlights or street lights or even car lights -- to make vertical beams of light cast straight up into the sky.

J: If you live near a large body of water, you can see a related phenomenon at sunset. Sun pillars are shafts of light either coming straight toward you over the water -- or aimed upwards. And they're also caused by reflection -- either by the water -- or by plate-like crystals in icy cirrus clouds floating overhead.

We're Block and Byrd for Earth and Sky.

Explanation / Answer

Light pillar is an phenomenon occurring in the atmosphere in which the vertical columns of light formed directly upwards. This is caused due to reflection of the light coming from the street lights, car lights by the ice crystals. These ice crystals are hexagonal in shape. Since their faces are flat when they fall during the snowstorm they act as tiny mirrors and reflects the light and make vertical columns of light in the sky.

Another phenomenon similar to this is sun pillars. Sun pillars is a phenomenon in which vertical shafts of light formed upwards or downwards. This is caused after the light coming from the sun is reflected by the tiny ice crystals of the cirrus clouds floating in the sky. This is usually during sunrise or sunset when the sun is below horizon. It can be due to light reflected from water also. The water as well as the ice crystals here act as mirrors

Both these phenomenon obey laws of reflection since in the light after being reflected by a mirror plane ,its incidence angle is equal to that of angle of reflection. Also here the angle of incidence, the normal and the angle of reflection lie in the same plane.

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