Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: geo driver on 25/05/2010 13:00:25
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right then guys help me brain out,
my aquarium, a wonderful thing, i can see the fish inside. when i look through it i can see the wall and my hand at the back of the aquarium, when i look into the aquarium but towards the side glass it turns into a mirror. why is this?
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It is called "total internal reflection". It is the same mechanism which allows prisms to be used in binoculars. It occurs when the angle of incidence is larger than a certain critical value determined by the refractive indices of the materials. The physics is explained in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_internal_reflection