Refraction & total internal reflection · 3D

Steer a light ray across a boundary and find the critical angle.

Refraction · no critical angle in this directionLive calculation

Show resultsReflection & anglesAngle values

Preparing the 3D experiment…

Experiment setup

Upper medium · refractive index

Examples: air ≈ 1.000, water ≈ 1.333, glass ≈ 1.500.

Lower medium · refractive index

Incident angle from the normal

Drag in the upper half of the diagram to steer the incident ray.

Vacuum wavelength

Used to compare wavelength in each medium. Indices remain fixed.

Results update as you change the setup. Your notebook and view zoom are kept.