Question

Mirage is an example of _______.

Answer 1

First of all we should know about the Total Internal Refraction for solving this question. Hence, Total internal reflection (TIR) is the phenomenon which involves the reflection of all the incident light off the boundary. It takes place only when both of the following two conditions are true in such cases: the light is in the denser medium and approaching the less dense medium.

Complete answer:
Whenever the light travels into a different medium, the light changes and the light is refracted due to the change speed of the light. In such cases, the angle of incidence is always smaller than the angle of refraction. Mirages took place only when the land was hot and the air was cool. When the land (the asphalt road or a desert land) gets heated up due to hot sun, the air just above the land gets automatically warmer.

Now, the light that travels from the cool air to the hot air refracts in U-shaped bent, back into the atmosphere but doesn't hit anything on the earth.Mirage is the example of the Total Internal Refraction on Sunny days, while driving down on a roadway, Mirage is most commonly observed. The role of the sun is to heat the roadway to high temperatures.

Note: Total internal Reflection is an optical phenomenon which is mainly observed when a ray of light travels from a denser medium to a rarer medium and strikes the boundary at an angle greater than the critical angle.