*8.  A flat sheet of ice has a thickness of 2.0 cm. It is on top of a flat sheet of crystalline quartz that has a thickness of 1.1 cm. Light strikes the ice perpendicularly and travels through it and then through the quartz. In the time it takes the light to travel through the two sheets, how far (in centimeters) would it have traveled in a vacuum?

 

The time for light to travel through a thickness is found from

 

So the time to travel through the pair of materials is the sum of times for each

 

 

Use table 26.1 to get the indices

 

 

 

Now the distance in a vacuum (nvacuum = 1) is found from

 

 

 

 

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This page last updated on July 1, 2018