Crave the Wave!!

[denmarksoccer]

truthfully, i thought that diffraction grating stuff was only national level stuff but i guess there were some papers someone from last year printed out about that stuff. i was completely freaking out cuz i didn't know how to do it but my partner flipped through the binder and we just found a packet about how to do the diffraction stuff....

Lucky!

[EastStroudsburg13]

I have to say, I would not have been able to do that if I had competed this year.

i take crave the wave for pa and was wondering how did everyone like the optics stations
cause i hated them
how were you supposed to find the refractive index if you don't have a beam of light
or you don't know what the OBJECT is made of!!!

alrite so you draw a straight line then you draw a line perpendicular to the straight line u drew and mark equal distances from the point of intersection. put the material over the line so that it is over the dot.. slowly move the material up and mark where the dot on the refracted line is... then you draw a line from that dot to the line of intersection and use snell's law. sorry that was really confusing... i got 2nd in states for that event

You're right, that was kind of confusing. Can you separate that into separate sentences?

[yoyosciencekid23]

okay but how would you use snell's law for the refractive index if you don't even know what the substance is made of!!

[Uranium235]

Do you have a beam of light to use?

[yoyosciencekid23]

nope just a protractor
a semicircle of plastic or glass
and 25 minutes to find the refractive index of it

[Uranium235]

Was it a material like calcite or Iceland Spar, with unique characteristics?

[yoyosciencekid23]

you really couldn't exactly pinpoint what it
was

i just went with glass

[Uranium235]

lol well its a likely culprit...

[yoyosciencekid23]

yep,

who knows i just think we didn't do very well on our test

[denmarksoccer]

It doesn't look like anybody else knew what to do either, because we guessed on the labs and on half the test, and still got 8th. I'm still laughing at that.