If light slows down when refracted, is it possible to slow it down so you can see it moving?

From your question, I understand that you are needed some review of concepts about light.

Light is not a matter to ‘see’. It is energy. We can perceive its presence through our eye.

Therefore, whether speed of energy with which it is transmitted from one object to another is high or low, we cannot “see” it.

If an object completely stops the light; its speed is zero; in a sense, the energy is resting there, no energy reaches our eye, we cannot perceive the object.

Some objects look black, because no light is coming from the object. It means the light is entering into the object. What happens to that light? Inside the medium its velocity is reduced. Depending upon the nature of the medium the energy of light may be absorbed in which case there is no light inside the medium. If not absorbed definitely it will come out of the medium. In any case we cannot “see” the light.

The refractive index of a medium is the ratio of the speed of light in air to the speed of light in the medium. The speed of light is 3E (8) m/s.

The maximum refractive index is ~ 4. Thus there is no material which can reduce the speed by one-fourth of its present speed.

Finally whatever its speed we cannot visualize the motion of light as it is energy and it is not matter.

Nowadays every one is familiar with radio, T. V, cell phone, internet connection to computers.

These are all working using electro magnetic rays of different frequencies like light wave.

Though we are not able to perceive these rays with our eye, we are using them. The light rays are perceived by our eye. It is the only difference between the rays.

Interesting responses. First....of course light slows down in various media. The index (n) is defined this way.

n = c/v where 'v' is the speed of light in the media.

I don't want to getting all mathematical, but essentially as the light slows down when it enters a medium with a semi-fixed index, there will be more time for the light to disperse.....'break apart', thus making it impossible to actually see.

However, there are experiments being done where a light trap captures a photon and suspends it. This is being done for various reasons, one of which is optical switches in computers.

In most real materials the index varies slightly with either direction thru the material, or with wavelength (refraction) or both. There are other factors at work as well. Absorption of the energy by the medium, polarization, frequency changes and so on.

Think of a ray of light like a group of cars and trucks headed into a big field of mud. Some of the cars will stop right away, others will go a little further, some of the trucks will go all the way thru, and others may spin out.

That's dispersion.

Light DOES slow down. We can relate how much it slows down using a formula for the "index of refraction". Most materials have a set number that they use but that number does differ slightly depending on the wavelength/frequency of the light. Light bends because of this change in speed (like if you were to drive with one tire in the mud -- it would cause you to turn towards the mud. Or if you run and someone grabs one of your arms, it will slow you down so that you get pulled in that direction.)

To answer your question a little more directly though, I don't think that you would be able to see it moving, mostly because light has such a small wavelength (we measure in nanometers which is really really small) that our eyes would not be able to make out individual waves that size.

Light dosn't slow down when refracted - only bent - diferent wave lengths (the visibale ones seen as diferent colors by our eyes) are bent at differing amounts at the interface of tranparent materials ie water and air or glass and air - thus a prisim forms a rainbow - but the speed of the light remains a constent - technically this is still a theory but it has never been ovservationally disproved - disregard the above and pay attention to the folks below

Actually, light has been slowed down to speeds that could be observable to the naked eye. It involves some tricky feats of chemistry, but there are certain substances where light has slowed down to 1 mph in the material. I'll put the link below. It should be noted that the second the light leaves the material, it'll speed back up to its happy travelling speed of 186,000 miles per second. But yes, light can be slowed substantially.

The previous answer was excellent-and Ill add that in the experiment where light was slowed, it wasnt the light itself that was slowed-in other words, the photons themselves were not slowed, but the waveform and energy content was stored in the atoms, and slowly moved until it was out of the medium, then became light again, generating new photons.

Perhaps we should re-visit what it means to 'see' something. When I see a chair, what I'm really seeing is the light bouncing off of the chair and entering my eye. As far as I know, light doesn't bounce off of light, hence there is no way to 'see' light in this sense.

BTW, this question was posed by Einstein. He pondered what it would be like to catch up to light. What would it look like when you were going the same speed. Not possible.

It's called "Frozen Light".

It's fairly new, but slowing light to see it's individual wave properties has been big in physics research in the past 5 years.

i heared few years ago about an experiment in which light speed reduced to 60 km\sec

No idiot !