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2025-05-02 15:40:18 UTC

Søren Kjærsgaard on Nostr: As light enters a more dense medium, it well bend because of the speed reduction in ...

As light enters a more dense medium, it well bend because of the speed reduction in that media. A bit like if your right wheel enters the gravel next to the road, the car wants to go there.

Now here comes the magic:
1) My sugar solution is a beautiful gradient: more dense towards the bottom, more watery towards the surface. This causes the light to bend in a nice curve, finally hitting the bottom.
2) I managed to find a balance where I have a nice density gradient and none or little sugar on the bottom. So now the bottom becomes a mirror because of the water and acrylic boundary.
The light will now reflect from the bottom, starting a new curve.
This will go on for the entire length of the container, or until I run out of light (it spreads, disperses, along the way). You can see I barely got started on the second jump.

Oh and the really cool thing: occasionally radio signals do the same, if the atmospheric conditions are just right 🙂

#stem #laserfun #engineer #testandmeasurement #physics