Definition
A light ray is a line or curve that is perpendicular to the light's wavefronts (and is therefore collinear with the wave vector). Light rays bend at the interface between two dissimilar media and may be curved in a medium in which the refractive index changes. Geometric optics describes how rays propagate through an optical system.
A slightly more rigorous definition of a light ray follows from Fermat's principle, which states that the path taken between two points by a ray of light is the path that can be traversed in the least time.
Read more about this topic: Ray (optics)
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?
Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?
Is the eternal truth man’s fighting soul
Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?”
—Richard Eberhart (b. 1904)
“The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places; of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places. The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“... if, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal, that we can understand our past through a male lens—if we are unaware that women even have a history—we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)