Question

If an object in air is viewed from beneath the surface of water below, where does the object appear to be?
(A) The object appears above its true position.
(B) The object appears exactly at its true position.
(C)The object appears below its true position.
(D)The object cannot be viewed from beneath the water’s surface.

Answer 1

Hint : In order to solve this question, we are going to consider the phenomenon of the refraction from the water to the air surface. Which tells us the formation of the image of the object lying in the air when seen from beneath the water surface. And then the position of that image is known.
Refraction of light travelling from the air to the water.

Complete Step By Step Answer:
When we see an object in the air from beneath the water, the light reaches our eye after refraction. The phenomenon of refraction refers to the bending of the light ray when it travels from one medium to another. The rays travel in the different mediums with the different speeds. The amount of ray bending depends upon the amount of the difference between the speed of the rays in the two mediums. Also, it depends upon the variation of the temperature and pressure which is known as Acoustic effect.
Thus, when we see an object in the air from beneath the surface of the water below, the object appears above its true position.
Hence, option (a) is the correct answer.

Note :
It is important to note that for viewing the object from beneath the water, the refractive indices of the two mediums greatly affect the image formation, in some cases total internal reflection also takes place if the light rays are travelling from water to the air, i.e. from denser to rarer medium.