The angle between this ray and the perpendicular or normal to the surface is the angle of incidence. e refracted ray or transmitted ray corresponding to a given incident ray represents the light that is transmitted through the surface. The angle between this ray and the normal is known as the angle of refraction, and it is given by Snell's Law. Conservation of energy requires that the power in the incident ray must equal the sum of the power in the transmitted ray, the power in the reflected ray, and any power absorbed at the surface. If the material is birefringent, the refracted ray may split into ordinary and extraordinary rays, which experience different indexes of refraction when passing through the birefringent material. Refraction is the change in direction of a wave due to a change in its speed. It is essentially a surface phenomenon . The phenomenon is mainly in governance to the law of conservation of energy. The proper explanation would be that due to change of medium, the phase velocity of the wave is changed but its frequency remains constant. This is most commonly observed when a wave passes from one medium to another at any angle other than 90 or 0. Refraction of light is the most commonly observed phenomenon, but any type of wave can refract when it interacts with a medium, for example when sound waves pass from one medium into another or when water waves move into water of a different depth. When light passes from one transparent medium to another, it bends according to Snell's law which states: Ni * Sin(Ai) = Nr * Sin(Ar), where: Ni is the refractive index of the medium the light is leaving, Ai is the incident angle between the light ray and the normal to the meduim to medium interface, Nr is the refractive index of the medium the light is entering, Ar is the refractive angle between the light ray and the normal to the meduim to medium interface. The numerical rule governing refraction was discovered by Snell, who must have collected experimental data something like what is shown on this graph and then attempted by trial and error to find the right equation. The equation he came up with was
The value of the constant would depend on the combination of media used. For instance, any one of the data points in the graph would have sufficed to show that the constant was 1.3 for an air-water interface (taking air to be substance 1 and water to be substance 2).