In class, we did two activities involving refraction. A refraction occurs when a wave hits a medium at an angle. This causes one side of the wave to slow down before the other. This change in speed causes the wave to bend. So, in class we used a glass prism to refract light. A glass prism shows the rainbow because different colors travel at different speed causing them to be refracted at different angles. This lets us see the plain old white light as a rainbow. The next activity we did was put a pencil into the water. The water caused the light waves to refract and the pencil to look distorted. I found out many interesting facts. One of them was that waves travel more slower in shallower water than in deeper water. So when waves come to the shallower water region they bend. This actually explains why waves never hit the shoreline at angles!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refraction
In the same way, mirages are caused and water is able to magnify!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refraction
In my opinion, it's really cool that a "boring" subject like refraction actually explains all of these natural phenomenona. Also...it's really cool to see people in rainbow through glass prisms!
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