Question

At what angle should a ray of light be incident on the face of a prism of refracting angle 60° so that it just suffers total internal reflection at the other face? The refractive index of the material of the prism is 1.524.

Answer 1

The incident, refracted, and emergent rays associated with a glass prism ABC are shown in the given figure.

= Emergent angle = 90° 

According to Snell’s law, for face AC, we can have:

It is clear from the figure that angle

According to Snell’s law, we have the relation:

Hence, the angle of incidence is 29.75°.