After coming out of water,how come the light ray gains its original speed again.....? (it slows down in water)

Question

when light passes from water its speed reduces, but at the time when it ceomes out of the wanter, it again regains its original speed. how is that possible.... from where it gets the acceleration to come again to its original speed....?

Answer 1

Light is a massless energy carrying electromagnetic waveform (although it can display particle like properties).

When light travels through a medium i.e. water, glass etc it slows down as it takes energy to travel through the medium. Once it has traveled through the medium it regains its original speed because it is massless and therefore doesn't obey Newtonian laws of physics but obeys Einsteins laws of physics i.e. reletivistic laws

The speed of light is a constant in whatever medium it travels through from the equation-:

Speed of Light = Speed of light in a vacuum / Refractive Index of the medium

Answer 2

It is a good question. How did it first slow down? If you understand that mechanism, the same mechanism will help you understand the increase in speed.

Acceleration applies to a material body acted upon by a force. Light is electromagnetic radiation and has no mass. It has a constant velocity in any given medium. Why the velocity changes from medium to medium is another matter.

Answer 3

Think of it such that light has it's own outboard motor that is always putting in exactly the same amount of power to make it go. If it is in a vacuum, it always goes the speed of light. When it hits water, it hits more resistance, so that same amount of energy is being applied, but it can't go quite as fast. When it comes back out of the water, it is still applying that same amount of energy, but with less resistance, so it will go it's original speed again.

Answer 4

Sorry, you're off. Time easily strikes on the comparable fee, incredibly. What I mean is that in case you have been with the clock that replaced into shifting close to mild velocity(if it easily moved at mild velocity it would convert to uncooked capability and be lost.. as a clock) it would look as though only 10 seconds had exceeded ( you may only age 10 seconds ), yet in the international your twin might age so lots greater. it particularly is easily demanding to hold close the "why" of this, yet whilst the neatest talkin monkey that ever lived believed it(Einstein) we small brainers are only gonna would desire to settle for it. the unusual section is that in case you went for a journey at close to mild velocity for say a three hundred and sixty 5 days, the human race might probably injury itself on your absence( it may be like a pair thousand years later or so....).everybody you realize would have perished of previous age, whether we controlled to stay alive as a race.

Answer 5

Great question but is there any research saying that the speed does not decrease only there frequency has decreased from the photons path being disturbed by the atoms within the water to have it reemerge at its normal energy state/frequency?

Answer 6

refraction - try googling it