What will light passing through a transparent medium do???

Question

Will it speed up slow down or not change?

Answer 1

Travel at a different velocity.

Bend (if striking the material at an angle, due to travelling at a different rate).

Different wavelengths bend by different amounts, so the light will be separated if it is bent. Depending on how much bending occurs, this may be very noticeable or not.

Answer 2

It usually refracts or bends. This is the case when it passes through the lens of the eye, and why it focuses on the back of the retina at precisely the point where the rods, cones, and nerve plexus is positioned to deliver images to the brain.

A simpler example: when you place your hand in water, you immediately see a shift of the image of your hand, because the light is refracting.

Now think of a prism, a crystal designed to bend light along different wavelengths so that the colors are separated into a rainbow.

This should be enough examples to illustrate the point. Anyone else have more examples?

Answer 3

"Gets refracted" is perhaps what you wanted to know. But the question is incomplete. Light passing through a transperent medium changes its velocity also, if it is coming from another medium or vacuum. The other answerer is also correct - if the medium is a prism, the white light will split up into VIBGYOR spectrum.

Answer 4

Like a prism? I believe it will separate the colors of that light into a sprectrum of colors...kind of like a rainbow.