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total internal reflection

British

noun

physics the complete reflection of a light ray at the boundary of two media, when the ray is in the medium with greater refractive index

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

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The same phenomenon of “broken” total internal reflection, but with light rays instead of water waves, is used in certain types of touch screen displays.

From Scientific American • Oct. 12, 2023

This is analogous to so-called total internal reflection of light rays.

From Scientific American • Oct. 12, 2023

Different combinations of materials have different critical angles, but any combination with n1 > n2 can produce total internal reflection.

From Textbooks • Aug. 12, 2015

Suppose you are using total internal reflection to make an efficient corner reflector.

From Textbooks • Aug. 12, 2015

I will place my lenses there at the chink through which you were gazing and bring the image down into my camera obscura by a prism arranged for total internal reflection.

From The Darrow Enigma by Severy, Melvin Linwood

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023