What is the name for the bending of light as it passes from one medium to another?
Light as rainbows and the aurora borealis offer many clues as to the nature of light. Refraction is the bending of light rays when passing through a surface between one transparent material and another. It is described by Snell's Law: where θ is the angle between the ray and the surface normal in the first medium, θ is the angle between the ray and the surface normal in the second medium, and n and n are the indices of refraction, "n" = 1 in a vacuum and "n" > 1 in a transparent substance. When a beam of light crosses the
The medium is the message He identified the light bulb as a clear demonstration of the concept of "the medium is the message". A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that "a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence." Likewise, the message of a newscast about a heinous