Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.
Trending News
How can I perform data analysis for this refraction physics lab?
The setup of the experiment is as drawn in the picture (where the red circle is a rotating disk, the box is a laser and the straight line the laser beam and the semi circle in the middle of the rotating disk is a container with a liquid) and the goal is to find the angle of refraction (θ2) in the picture. Knowing θ1 and the distance d, how can we find θ2? (The blue dotted line is the normal to the surface of refraction).
1 Answer
- denisLv 45 years ago
is "d" the distance between the blue line and the red line? I'll assume it is.
Now, notice how θ1 is the sum of some unknown angle "x" and θ2 in the triangle with sides of 1 and d. Since we know θ1, angle x is simply θ1 - θ2. The trigonometric relation then follows:
tan(θ1 - θ2) = d/1
tan(θ1 - θ2) = d
θ1 - θ2 = arctan(d)
θ2 = θ1 - arctan(d)