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Question
When light travels from an optically denser medium to a rarer medium, why does the critical angle of incidence depend on the colour of light?
Solution
The critical angle for a given pair of medium is given by
`Sin "i"_"c" = (1)/mu`
where μ is the refractive index of the denser medium. The refractive index of a medium depends on the wavelength by the relation
`mu = "A" + "B"/lambda^2`
and each colour of light is associated with a specific wavelength, so as the wavelength of light increases critical angle increases.
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