Term 2 Reflections

Term 2: Physics

In Term 2, we learned physics. Physics to me was rather interesting, but I was extremely confused by refraction, and whether the drawings we had to do were supposed to be extremely precise or just a rough estimation. We learned about light and light properties, with the main focus on reflection and refraction.

Reflection was pretty easy for me, but refraction made me do extremely badly, as I did not understand the concept well. Here are 2 diagrams depicting reflection and refraction, respectively.

The refractive index is calculated by sin i/ sin r, i being the angle of incidence and r being the angle of refraction.
There are 2 types of reflections, diffused and specular reflection. Specular reflection refers to the reflection when light reflects off a smooth surface, and diffused reflection when light reflects off a rough surface. The examples are below as below, respectively.

In most questions, we are required to draw the diagram for specular reflection. Well, reflection was a breeze for me, but refraction was what I was really bad at.

Refraction is basically the bending of light (refer to above diagram). Refraction affects us in many ways that we might not previously have known, such as, it helps myopic people to see clearly. Yes, I am talking about glasses, something that many people nowadays use daily. As you can see below, it is a side view of our eyeballs.

You might have noticed it seems similar to a pinhole camera. That is why refraction is able to help us see better, as myopia causes images to fall in front of our retina instead of on it, causing the images to become blurred. That is why spectacles are sometimes thicker than others, as it all depends on how much needs to be refracted. The many different kinds of spectacle lenses also have different refractive indexes, and so some might be more expensive than others.

Term 2 Test

For this test, I did really badly. I spent too much time on drawing, and left out 2 whole pages which were roughly 10 to 15 marks in total. That cost me a lot of marks and I barely scraped a pass out of the exam. I am determined to study harder for physics as I know it is just the refraction concept I am not too sure about, which also affected some of my drawings.