Michael+W.



Physics Photo Competition Project. By Michael Wong

Fish tank tubing filled with water. Light is refracted from one end to other, can see a segment of light at the end of tubing. This is a contrived photo.

This photo demonstrates //__Total Internal Reflection__//. As you can see at beginning of the tubing where the light enters, there is a vivid display of light. The light rays emitted by the flash light enters at completely random directions; thus, many of the light rays are not reflected and become visible. As the tubing progresses, the light rays begin to straighten out (more as if only the light rays within the critical angle remained, and the rest were emitted) and less light becomes visible. This is why at the end, there is an unexpected segment of light, which is the reflected light rays exiting the tubing.