Effect of Temperature-Induced Medium Changes on Light Refraction

Physics is the field of study that seeks to understand nature by investigating interactions between objects, the motion of objects, the composition, properties, and changes of matter, as well as transformations of energy. Among its many branches, optics is a field of physics that studies the behavior and properties of light. The origins of optics can be traced back to the invention of mirrors, when humanity first began to manipulate light. Mirrors are estimated to have first appeared as early as 1500 BCE, indicating that the study of optics has developed alongside human civilization. The advancement of optics has significantly influenced the development of modern physics, becoming closely related to various subfields such as quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, spectroscopy, and the theory of relativity. As such, light has become an indispensable element in modern physics, and understanding light is an essential step in comprehending modern physics as a whole. In reality, light propagates not only in a vacuum but also through media. Therefore, in order to understand the refraction of light—and ultimately light itself—it is necessary to understand the fundamental principles governing how light propagates through a medium, which is the root cause of refraction. However, the Physics I textbook used by second-year students at Yeongnam High School explains refraction only in terms of differences in the speed of light depending on the medium, without addressing the fundamental reason why the speed of light varies across different media. Similarly, the supplementary textbook EBS Concept Completion – Physics I, also used by these students, does not provide any explanation of this fundamental cause. This lack of explanation presents a limitation in understanding the principle of light refraction, especially considering that light commonly propagates through media rather than in a vacuum. Therefore, to properly understand the refraction of light in real-world conditions, it is necessary to investigate the factors that influence the propagation of light in media. In this study, the introduction will review the concepts necessary to understand the research process and examine the principles of light propagation in the presence of a medium. The main body will then focus on exploring how these principles are applied in practice through an experiment analyzing changes in the angle of refraction with respect to temperature variations.