If you pull the straw out of the water, though, you can clearly see that it's just as straight as when you put it in. The reason it looks different is because of light refraction. Rather than ...

the light reflects from the straw through the air and glass to your eyes. But below, when the light also travels through water, the refraction causes the image of the straw to be in a slightly ...

All materials have what is known as an index of refraction ... surface that can be cleaned if any water or oil spills on it. Take your eyedropper (or straw) and, without squeezing it, immerse ...

Refraction—the bending of the path of light when it passes from one medium to another—is a familiar phenomenon. If you place a drinking straw into a glass of water, the straw will appear bent ...

An easy way to see refraction in action is to put a straw into a glass half-filled with water. From the top, it looks like the straw is bent or broken. From the side, depending on where in the ...

This can be seen when looking at a straw in a cup of water (see below ... if they could make a material with a negative index of refraction at any given frequency. That would mean, for example ...

the difference in the refractive index between the two will cause the light wave to bend at a certain angle. Consider what happens when you stick a straw into a glass of water — the straw ...

That's actually what we mean by “refraction.” You see it when you look at a straw in a glass of water: The part of the straw underwater doesn't match up with the part above. Why? The bending ...