Talking Physics

I’ve been asked to provide a demo of refracting microwaves, always up for a challenge but I’m not sure I can.

 

I have a triangular Perspex container and a square one, I can put paraffin in those but I’ll need a collimated beam. I have a wax lens and a hollow lens so I could fill that with paraffin and have two lenses.

 

If I manage to get the divergent beam from my emitter parallel through one lens presumably I could find the focal length of the other with a detector. Though our detector is very erratic)

 

How could I use a prism?

I did have this equipment in one school. However we never got around to setting up.
We had the wax lens and the hollow prism to put the paraffin in.

I guess if you direct the narrow beam at the top of the prism you can show a deviation of the beam.

 

I found a youtube clip where they just pointed the emitter at the lens and had the detector behind the lens. They pulled the detector slowly back until the reading hit a maximum, that then shows focussing of the beam through refraction.

I’m sure I’ve seen a Nuffield experiment using two lenses, we have a wax one and a hollow one. Our prism is quite small we would need a collimated beam for that.

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