What is Snell’s Law?

Snell’s Law is about how light bends when it goes from one material to another, like when you stick your foot into a pool and it looks wobbly.

Imagine you're playing with a ball on a basketball court. The floor is smooth, but when the ball rolls onto the grass, it slows down and changes direction. That’s kind of what happens to light when it moves from air into water or glass, it bends because it's moving slower in the new material.

Snell’s Law helps us predict exactly how much the light will bend based on how fast it travels in each material. It's like knowing that if you roll the ball onto grass, it'll turn a little, but if you roll it onto sand, it’ll turn more, because sand slows the ball down even more.

When light moves into a new material, it changes speed, just like your ball changes speed when it rolls from court to grass. The faster the light was moving before, and the slower it becomes in the new material, the more it bends. This bending is what makes things look shifted under water or through a glass.

So Snell’s Law is like a rulebook for light, telling it how to behave when it moves between different materials.