Mission RL5: Total Internal Reflection

Mission RL5 pertains to the behavior of lght at a boundary and the effect that the angle of incidence has upon the tendency of the light to refract and/or reflect. The mission consists of 39 questions organized into 10 Question Groups. You must answer one question from each Question Group to complete the mission. The learning outcomes for this mission are ...
 

Learning Outcomes

• The student should be able to use an understanding of boundary behavior of light to predict the effect of changing incident angle upon the brightness and relative amount of energy in the reflected and refracted light.
• The student should be able to identify the two prerequisites for the occurrence of total internal reflection and apply these to determine whether or not it could occur in any given situation.

 

Launch Mission RL5

 

Getting Help

If you are not familiar with this topic, then you should first learn about the topic using our written Tutorial or our Video Tutorial:
 

The Physics Classroom, Refraction and Lenses Unit, Lesson 3, Part a

The Physics Classroom, Refraction and Lenses Unit, Lesson 3, Part b
 

• What effect will an increase in the angle of incidence have upon the subsequent angle of refraction?
• How does increasing the angle of incidence effect the amount of light (and brightness of it) which undergoes reflection (or refraction)?
• What is total internal reflection?
• What are the two requirements for total internal reflection to occur?
• What is the critical angle?
• When total internal reflection occurs, does all the light or a portion of light undergo reflection?
• How can one use index of refraction values for two media to determine if an incident ray could undergo total internal reflection?
• How is the index of refraction value related to the density of a medium?

 

 

Video Tutorials:

Total Internal Reflection
 

 

 

Question-Specific Help

Each Question Group has its own Help page with information specific to the question. You can access the Help page from within the mission by tapping on the Help Me! icon (textbook). For your convenience, links to those pages are provided below: