Ch. 1 Key Terms - University Physics Volume 3 | OpenStax

Skip to Content Go to accessibility page

Key Terms

birefringent: refers to crystals that split an unpolarized beam of light into two beams

Brewster’s angle: angle of incidence at which the reflected light is completely polarized

Brewster’s law: $tan θ_{b} = \frac{n_{2}}{n_{1}}$ , where $n_{1}$ is the medium in which the incident and reflected light travel and $n_{2}$ is the index of refraction of the medium that forms the interface that reflects the light

corner reflector: object consisting of two (or three) mutually perpendicular reflecting surfaces, so that the light that enters is reflected back exactly parallel to the direction from which it came

critical angle: incident angle that produces an angle of refraction of $90 °$

direction of polarization: direction parallel to the electric field for EM waves

dispersion: spreading of light into its spectrum of wavelengths

fiber optics: field of study of the transmission of light down fibers of plastic or glass, applying the principle of total internal reflection

geometric optics: part of optics dealing with the ray aspect of light

horizontally polarized: oscillations are in a horizontal plane

Huygens’s principle: every point on a wave front is a source of wavelets that spread out in the forward direction at the same speed as the wave itself; the new wave front is a plane tangent to all of the wavelets

index of refraction: for a material, the ratio of the speed of light in a vacuum to that in a material

law of reflection: angle of reflection equals the angle of incidence

law of refraction: when a light ray crosses from one medium to another, it changes direction by an amount that depends on the index of refraction of each medium and the sines of the angle of incidence and angle of refraction

Malus’s law: where $I_{0}$ is the intensity of the polarized wave before passing through the filter

optically active: substances that rotate the plane of polarization of light passing through them

polarization: attribute that wave oscillations have a definite direction relative to the direction of propagation of the wave

polarized: refers to waves having the electric and magnetic field oscillations in a definite direction

ray: straight line that originates at some point

refraction: changing of a light ray’s direction when it passes through variations in matter

total internal reflection: phenomenon at the boundary between two media such that all the light is reflected and no refraction occurs

unpolarized: refers to waves that are randomly polarized

vertically polarized: oscillations are in a vertical plane

wave optics: part of optics dealing with the wave aspect of light

Order a print copy

Citation/Attribution

Reuse and redistribution of this content in digital or print format:

This book may not be used in the training of large language models or otherwise be ingested into large language models or generative AI offerings without OpenStax's prior written permission.
This book uses the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License, which means that you can reuse and modify the material only for noncommercial purposes, must attribute OpenStax, and must distribute any derivative works under the same license.
Any commercial printing of this textbook, including using a local or custom printer, must be approved by OpenStax, and proper citation provided.
OpenStax-copyrighted images, activities, assessments, and similar components of this book are subject to the same licensing – CC-BY-NC-SA. They can be used for noncommercial purposes with attribution. Commercial use requires permission.
Permission requests: Anyone who intends to incorporate this content (including text, images, and other components) into large language models, use it in AI offerings, use it commercially (including in print), and/or has questions about another use case is welcome to complete our reuse request form.

Attribution information

If you are redistributing all or part of this book in a noncommercial print format, then you must include on every physical page the following attribution:
Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/university-physics-volume-3/pages/1-introduction
If you are redistributing all or part of this book in a noncommercial digital format, then for every page that includes OpenStax content, you must license the derivative work under the same CC-BY-NC-SA license as the original, and include on every digital page view the following attribution:
Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/university-physics-volume-3/pages/1-introduction

Citation information

The information below includes the information needed to generate citations in most major styles (APA, MLA, etc.); you must reformat and organize the information as needed to fit the requirements of the style. Use the information below to generate a citation. We recommend using a citation tool such as this one.

Authors: Samuel J. Ling, Jeff Sanny, William Moebs
Publisher/website: OpenStax
Book title: University Physics Volume 3
Publication date: Sep 29, 2016
Location: Houston, Texas
Book URL: https://openstax.org/books/university-physics-volume-3/pages/1-introduction
Section URL: https://openstax.org/books/university-physics-volume-3/pages/1-key-terms

© Jun 11, 2026 OpenStax. Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. The OpenStax name, OpenStax logo, OpenStax book covers, OpenStax CNX name, and OpenStax CNX logo, and Rice University name, and Rice University logo trademarks, or wordmarks are not subject to the Creative Commons license and may not be reproduced without the prior and express written consent of Rice University.