Category: sunlight

At what angles do light rays reflect out of a prism? — BC, Farmersville, TX

It depends on the shape of the prism and the angle at which the light arrived at the prism. Whenever light’s speed changes as it passes through a surface at an angle, the light bends. Since light travels faster in air than in glass (or plastic), it bends when it goes from air to glass or from glass to air. When light enters glass, it slows down and it bends toward the normal to the surface (toward the line that’s at right angles to the surface). When light leaves glass, it speeds up and it bends away from the normal to the surface. To know exactly how far the light bends, you need to know how much the glass slows light (the glass’s refractive index) and the angle at which the light encountered the glass surface (the angle of incidence). You can then use one of the basic laws of optics, Snell’s law, to determine the angle at which the light continues through the glass. You can then do the same for the light’s emergence from the glass and determine the angle at which it leaves.

What does the SPF on sun screens mean? – RC

Sunscreens contain pigments that absorb invisible ultraviolet radiation. While they appear clear and transmit visible light so that you can’t see them when they’re on your skin, sunscreens are almost opaque to ultraviolet light. A sunscreen’s SPF is related to the fraction of ultraviolet light that it absorbs. An SPF of 15 means that a normal layer of this sunscreen on your skin transmits only 1 part in 15 of the ultraviolet light that reaches it from the sun. An SPF of 40 means that a layer of this sunscreen transmits only 1 part in 40 of the ultraviolet light. The true transmission of the sunscreen depends somewhat on how you apply it and how much you apply, so these SPF ratings are only approximate. A sunscreen contains a mixture of dye molecules that transmit visible light but absorb ultraviolet light (and convert its the light’s energy into thermal energy). Most if not all of these dye molecules are artificial organic compounds that have been carefully selected to be non-toxic and non-irritating. The first popular sunscreen contained a compound called PABA that caused skin reactions in many people, but more recent dye choices are less likely to cause skin trouble.

Why do the earth’s oceans appear blue to an observer on the moon?

The earth’s oceans and sky both appear blue to everyone who observes them. They do this because water absorbs blue light less strongly than it absorbs other colors. When ocean water is exposed to sunlight (white light), it absorbs most of the red light quickly and a good fraction of the green light. But the blue light penetrates to considerable depth in the water and there is a reasonable chance that this light will be scattered back upward to an observer on the shore, in the air, or even on the moon.

Does light have mass? If so, then how can it travel at the speed of light? Doesn’t the mass of an object (particle) approach infinity as its velocity approaches the speed of light?

Light has precisely zero mass and that makes all the difference. You’re right that taking a massive particle up to the speed of light is impossible because doing so would, in a certain sense, give the particle an infinite mass. But the more important issue here is that doing so would require an infinite amount of energy and momentum.

Most physicists use the word mass to mean a particle’s mass at rest—its rest mass—and as you bring the particle to higher and higher speeds, its rest mass doesn’t change. However, the relationship between the particle’s energy and its momentum does change with speed and the particle’s momentum begins to increase more rapidly than it should according to the older, pre-relativistic mechanical theories. In an effort to explain this anomalous increase in momentum while retaining the old Newtonian laws of motion, people sometimes assign a fictitious “mass” to the particle; one that equals the rest mass when the particle is stationary but that increases as the particle’s speed increases. As a particle approaches the speed of light, its momentum increases without limit and so does its “mass.” Not surprisingly, the limitless rises in energy, momentum, and “mass” prevent the massive particle from ever reaching the speed of light.

As for light, it really does have zero mass and therefore can’t be described by the Newtonian laws of motion. All light has is its momentum and its energy. In fact, light can’t travel slower than the speed of light because that would require it to have a mass! So the world of particles is divided into two groups: massless particles that must travel at the speed of light and massive particles that can never travel at the speed of light.

During a total solar eclipse, does the moon make first contact with the sun on the eastern limb or the western limb? Can you explain this to me?

The moon orbits the earth from west to east. By that, I mean that if the earth were to stop turning, the moon would then rise in the west and set in the east. During a total solar eclipse, the moon is drifting directly in front of the sun. Since the moon moves from west to east, it will first block the western edge of the sun, the western limb. In contrast, during a total lunar eclipse, the moon is drifting into the earth’s shadow. Since it is moving from west to east, its eastern edge will enter the shadow first.

Is it possible to create a “fog” in a small enclosed area without using dry ice or ultrasound?

The two techniques you mention, dry ice and ultrasound, are both intended to make tiny droplets of water in the air, effectively producing an artificial cloud. While I can’t think of any better ways to make such water droplets, I can think of ways to make fogs of other materials. Tiny particles of any clear material will work because what you are seeing is the random scattering of light as it’s partially reflected from the front and back surfaces of clear particles. I’d suggest a chemical process that produces tiny clear particles. The easiest one I can think of is to place a dish of household ammonia (ammonium hydroxide—ammonia gas dissolved in water) and a dish of hydrochloric acid (hydrogen chloride gas dissolved in water, sold as muriatic acid by hardware stores) in your enclosed area. The two gases will diffuse throughout your enclosure and react to form tiny clear particles of ammonium chloride. The enclosure will fill with a dense white fog. The particles are so small, that they will remain in the air for a very long time, but they will eventually settle on surfaces and leave a white powdery residue. So, unlike a water fog, this chemical fog is a little messy. You shouldn’t breathe the fog, either.

Does the rainbow go all the way to the ground?

Yes, it forms an arc that extends to the ground. However, any hills or valleys may obscure its visibility or its sunlight, so you often see it truncated or in shadow.

What makes the clouds white – or having colors at sunset and why is the sky gray on a cloudy day?

The water droplets in clouds are quite large; large enough to be good antennas for all colors of light. As light passes by those droplets, some of it scatters (is absorbed by the antenna/water droplets and is reemitted by the antenna/water droplets). Since there is no color preference in this scattering from large droplets, the scattered light has the same color as the light that illuminated the cloud. In the daytime, the sunlight is white so the clouds appear white. But at sunrise or sunset, the sun’s light is mostly red (the blue light has been scattered away by the atmosphere before it reached the clouds) so the clouds appear red, too. If the clouds are very thick, they may absorb enough light (or scatter enough upward into space) to appear gray rather than white. Another way to see why the clouds are white is to realized that light reflects from every surface of the water droplets. As the light works its way through the random maze of droplets, it reflects here and there and eventually finds itself traveling in millions of random directions. When you look at a cloud, you see light coming toward you from countless droplets, traveling in countless different directions. You interpret this type of light, having the sun’s spectrum of wavelengths but coming uniformly from a broad swath of space, as being white. These two views of how light travels in a cloud (absorption and reemission from droplets or reflections from droplet surfaces) turn out to be exactly equivalent to one another. They are not different physical phenomena, but rather two different ways to describe the same physical phenomena.

Why isn’t the sky bright blue when the sun is red?

During the day, the sky is blue because the air and dust in the air scatter mainly blue light toward your eyes. They also scatter some red light, but the blue light dominates. But at sunset, things change. The setting sun approaches the earth’s atmosphere at a very shallow angle so that it must travel many kilometers through the air before reaching your eyes. During this long trip, most of the blue light is scattered away and the sun appears very red. If the path is long enough, the blue light is scattered away many kilometers to your west so that there isn’t much of it left. When this occurs, even the sky around you appears somewhat reddish because there just isn’t any more blue to scatter. The missing blue light is visible to people living 50 or 100 kilometers to the west as their blue sky.

How come I never find the pot of gold at the base of the rainbow?

The people who invented that tale were well aware of the impossibility of reaching the rainbow itself. Knowing that the rainbow moves with you, they were free to promise anything about what lies at the base of the rainbow.