Mirages: From a distance seen the water on the highway when the weather is sunny and hot

in #science6 years ago (edited)

When driving a vehicle that passes through a paved road during the day, we may have experienced a puddle of water from a distance on the highway in front of us. However, when we get to a location where we hope to see a puddle, there is no water stagnant there. Why did it happen? The appearance of this imaginary puddle is a kind of mirage. The appearance of this puddle of imagination is a kind of mirage. Fatamorgana is a phenomenon that occurs where the image of an object actually does not exist, which is produced due to the refraction of sunlight by the atmosphere. Light refraction can occur when light travels through one material to another with different densities.

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This mirage occurs because the road surface gets the sun with a strong intensity, so there is a considerable temperature difference near the road surface. Near the surface of the hot asphalt road is a layer of cold air. The colder air layer has a greater density than the hotter air layer. Therefore, the sunlight coming from the layer of cold air to the hot air layer will be refracted from the normal line.

Light rays from the sky move from the cold air layer to the warmer air layer, and the hot air layer is gradually refracted from the normal line, so that it is finally deflected upward as light enters a layer of hot air near the road surface. This lamp is refracted to the eye as if this light comes from the road surface or even from below the road. Therefore, our eyes see the shadows of the sky like puddles on the paved road in front of us.

Type of mirage, inferior mirage, superior mirage and lateral mirage:

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  • Inferior Fatamorgana is the most common type of mirage. In an inferior mirage, an object looks as if the real object and its shadow are in a puddle. This can happen because if the soil is very hot, the heat will be irradiated out of the ground and warm the air just above it. As the light passes through the cold air above and into the warmer air beneath it, the light will be deflected. Inferior fatamorgana is usually seen on paved roads on a hot and sunny day, and often looks like a puddle on the road surface.

  • While the superior mirage usually appears above the horizon, because the cold air is under warm air. It usually appears on ice or very cold water. In this type of mirage, the object looks much higher than its original position. An example of this type of mirage is the depiction of a floating island commonly seen by sailors. Excess mirages are most visible in the polar regions as there is a large amount of ice and cold water. We can also often observe this type of mirage as the sun sets on the horizon, where the sun appears above its true position and sometimes even in reverse.

  • Lateral Fatamorgana is similar to inferior fatamorgana, but in lateral mirages, the temperature gradient comes in a horizontal direction, for example as in the walls of buildings with vertical plane. So the wall of the building has a temperature that is hotter than the surrounding air temperature. Due to the temperature difference, if the sunlight coming out from the parts of the sun coming from the medium to the medium with cooler temperatures, then the incoming rays will be biased horizontally away from the normal line. This causes the formation of the shadow right next to the original object.

Mirages can occur if conditions:

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  • Difference of refractive index of air
    The refractive index is the ability of the medium to bias the direction of the speed of light. In the process of forming a mirage, there is a difference of air density in medium air with temperatures of heat and medium temperature with cold temperatures, making the refractive indices of both mediums also different. The index of refraction of air medium with cold temperature will be greater than the index of refraction of air medium with hot temperature.

  • The existence of Light Refraction
    Refraction of light can occur because of differences in refractive index. When air particles stretch due to very hot temperatures, incoming sunlight will be refracted because of differences in refractive index in air with hot and cold temperatures. The conditions for the refraction of light are, the presence of light coming through two media having different optical densities and the incoming light not perpendicular to the boundary plane of "event angle smaller than 90 °".

  • Perfect Light Reflection
    Light will be perfectly reflected if light passes through different media and the forthcoming corner produces a "900" refraction angle and is greater in value than the critical angle calculated by Snellius's law.

Miracles have an impact on the public sphere of life:

  • Fatamorgana will make us misinterpret the layout of the city if we take pictures of the location of a city and so on.

  • When the air temperature around us is very hot during the day, our eyes will get tired easily because of different refraction of light in the air layer. Due to the refraction of this light, then we will see like there is a puddle of water which is a phenomenon of optical illusion.

Thank you, this is my writing for this time, if there are words that are not good, not polite, not clear. I can only apologize. Perfection belongs only to God, I am only human who can not escape from mistakes. So, greetings from me @youngky. For my friends in steemit and for all my faithful followers.



Note: All letters and numbers are mine, but the picture I got from google, I just use it to connect from my writing.

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