Winter Ball Snow Globe

In this cool snow-globe we got at Winter-Ball, you can see a great example of refraction. In the picture you see the picture, or object, and the picture "magnified" through the globe, or the image. This refraction occurs similarly to how the object refracted in our Cheese-box experiment. The picture refracts because the index of refraction of water is greater than the index of refraction of air, about 1.33 to 1. Using Snell's Law we can determine the angle of refraction of the object. Snell's Law is n2sin(theta)=n2sin(theta) where the first theta is the angle of incidence of the light hitting the object. Because the snow-globe is round the light refracts only once and because the picture in the snow-globe takes up most of the globe, it each point on the picture refracts equally and the picture appears to be magnified.

Also, if you turn the snow-globe there is a point where you can no longer see the image. This is where total internal refraction occurs. Total internal refraction occurs at a critical angle as found by the equation Sinc=n2/n1, so in this case it is about 49 degrees from the center of the picture.