[rivoli]

Please, lets not get stuck on basic algebra

my goodness, are you trying to drive me crazy thomas? what other kind of algebra do you think we should stuck on then?

[tom]

thomas, please correct that picture then because i looked at it tons of time and there writes the opposite of what you say

-edit: oh no.. you're right thomas... one is velocity and the other is IOR

[Mihai]

Thomas, I don't understand this complication......

Why do you say:
"So IOR from glass to liquid=1.33/1.57=0.847. "

Then what you are doing is:

material 2
________
material 1

which is obviously wrong, isn't it? The light is coming FROM glass, going INTO liquid.

[tom]

thinking relative it doesn't seem wrong to me mihai... but i'm not sure... even not sure of anything again

[Thomas An.]

Thomas, I don't understand this complication......

Why do you say:
"So IOR from glass to liquid=1.33/1.57=0.847. "

Then what you are doing is:

material 2
________
material 1

which is obviously wrong, isn't it? The light is coming FROM glass, going INTO liquid.

IOR is the ratio of velocities from one medium to the other. In our case it is from glass to liquid. So the ratio of velocities from glass to liquid is Vcg/Vcl, but they are both unknowns so I replace them with their equivalent (Vcg=Vc / IORglass and Vcl=Vc / IORliquid).

After the replacement the math works out the reverse of what everyone expected...

[Mihai]

Thomas, yes you are right

Now you can demand your apology

This clears up a lot of things for me, it should have been clear that the IOR between glass and liquid is less than 1 because light is increasing in speed...

We'll soon have the best glass/water the world has ever seen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[rivoli]

what about dielectrics in maxwell that can't have IOR lesser than 1?

[Mihai]

Well, what we only need to set really is the materials absolute IOR, that is the difference in velocity of light between vacuum(or air) and the material. Then, Maxwell should figure out by itself the IOR between different material boundaries. Therefore, it is currently impossible to have correct results between dielectric-dielectric boundaries.

Bonne nuit.....

[Thomas An.]

Thomas, yes you are right

Now you can demand your apology

This clears up a lot of things for me, it should have been clear that the IOR between glass and liquid is less than 1 because light is increasing in speed...

We'll soon have the best glass/water the world has ever seen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Great
Now that everything is more clear, it is time to go back in and get confused some more because I have a new theory ....

I think Maxwell is using shell's law and we do not need to have an IOR ratio at all. As a matter of fact it seems that my original plain image might have been correct after all

[rivoli]

okay, but at the moment it can't calculate IORs lesser than 1, that mean in any situation in which IOR should be say 0,85 it'll calucalte it as 1 instead, maybe.

[Mihai]

I don't know......what we're really interested in finding out is the angle of the ray from the normal of the surface.....

Just read now about refraction, and it seems to me what you need to know is the sines of the angles of incidence and refraction, and the absolute IOR of the respective materials. From this you can find out how the ray should bend through the different mediums.

EDIT: Thomas, yes Snells law I think is what I described above? uhhhh.....time for a break I think......So I think you're right Thomas, we should just leave the water's IOR at 1.33 at all sides....

So I think it's not really a question of calculating IOR<1, it's just we have this problem of not being able to put two dielectrics right next to each other, without a boundary of air between them.

[Thomas An.]

ok here it is.

Maxwell basically needs to know the angle to deflect a ray going from one medium to the next. So it is (must be) using the Snell's law.
Therefore the detouched surface (in red) should have, plainly, the IOR of the liquid. That is it. No ratios needed (just a plain IOR for the liquid).



So this was correct after all.

[Thomas An.]

So now we are back full circle to Mihai's original test (No3).
The rays that enter from above will encounter NO glass. So basically Maxwell thinks that after the bottom of the liquid there is air

[skazka]

Hi all! I'm playing with glass & liquid now, and thinking about same problems you are discussing. 6 pages! I saw different schemes and don’t remember right one
As for me, it’s very simple (after two nights of experiments .
We have glass, and from the part of the glass we make water, or something else. At the beginning we have same point’s positions in glass and water. And it seems to me, that Maxwell thinks that it is one object, not two (you can try, set another color and parameters for water, but if points have the same position with glass points, you can see that water became glass)
I try to size the water not to be equal with glass. Size – 0.999 Not very big difference, as you can see. But now points have not the same location, and Maxwell see that here is the glass, and after the end of glass, water surface situated. And very little gap between (mili or nano, may be ) I hope, you are understanding me, my English is not perfect yet.
And this is my sheme:

[rivoli]

The rays that enter from above will encounter NO glass. So basically Maxwell thinks that after the bottom of the liquid there is air

well, it looks like. what else could it think anyway? light goes from a faster medium to a slower one (air to glass), then to something which is a bit faster (water) and then after exitting water and before entering glass again (this time normals are pointing the other direction so i don't know what may happen there) there's again something which is quite faster, that is vacuum/air again.

edit:
no, it should bend light correctly if it knew how to deal with faces which normals are pointing not toward the ray but the other way.