explain the formation of mirage
Answers
Answered by
4
A traveler has lost his way in the desert. Enduring thirst and hunger, he suddenly saw an oasis, so the overjoyed man quickly ran towards it. To his great disappointment, it was just an illusion produced by a mirage. Such an episode was often pictured in movies, yet the optical magic that the nature plays with us - mirage - really exists in reality. Its formation is a result of the refraction and the total internal reflection of light in the air.
To investigate the formation of a mirage, we firstly need to understand why light is refracted in the air. Regions of air at different temperatures have different refractive indexes, just like many different mediums. The closer the air is to the ground, the hotter it will be, and its refractive index will be smaller. We could imagine the air as many layers of medium with a particular refractive index for every layer, and the refractive index is smaller for those that are closer to the ground. Thus when light travels in air, its path
To investigate the formation of a mirage, we firstly need to understand why light is refracted in the air. Regions of air at different temperatures have different refractive indexes, just like many different mediums. The closer the air is to the ground, the hotter it will be, and its refractive index will be smaller. We could imagine the air as many layers of medium with a particular refractive index for every layer, and the refractive index is smaller for those that are closer to the ground. Thus when light travels in air, its path
Answered by
0
mirage is a naturally occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays bend via refraction to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky.
Similar questions