Anodyne
Monday, April 12, 2010
 

"Snell’s law describes how light rays bend when they pass from air into water, as they do when shining into a swimming pool. Light moves more slowly in water, much like the hiker in the snow, and it bends accordingly to minimize its travel time. Similarly, light also bends when it travels from air into glass or plastic as it refracts through your eyeglass lenses.

The eerie point is that light behaves as if it were considering all possible paths and automatically taking the best one. Nature. . .somehow knows calculus."


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