Derive the law 1of reflection and the law of refraction from Fermat’s

Principle

Paper I:

Derive the law of reflection and the law of

refraction from Fermat’s Principle

Li Shengchen

International School of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications

(December 5, 2008)

Preface

As all of us concern, the Fermat’s Principle is a famous law which is

derived by Fermat in 17 century. It says light travels between two points

along that path which requires the least time, as compared to other

nearby paths. It is one of the general principles of light path from one point

to another. However, for the junior students, they seldom know about

Composed by Li
Shengchen
December 5th, 2008
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Derive the law of reflection and the law of refraction from Fermat’s
Principle

Fermat’s Principle, they study other two laws instead. They are called the law

of reflection and the law of refraction. In fact, these laws are just some

applications of Fermat’s Principles. In this paper, we will show the proof of

them by using Fermat’s Principle.

The proof of the law of reflection

The law of reflection said, (In Figure 1), for a light ray traveling in air

and incident on a smooth surface, the angle of reflection equals the

angle of incidence.

Figure 1

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December 5, 2008
Derive the law 3of reflection and the law of refraction from Fermat’s
Principle

As the figure shows, the blue angle is angle of incident, the red angle is angle of

reflection, the incident ray travels in path r1 and the reflected ray travels in path r2.

All the distance between points will be used in the following proof, labeled a, x, y, b, is

in the figure as well. The normal line is normal with the ground.

As we can easily get, the length of r1 and r2 are:

r1=x2+a2, r2=(y-x)2+b2

Obvious, since all the path is in the same medium, there is no harm to assume the

speed of light is c. Then, the time that the light travels r1 and r2 can be

expressed as:

t=x2+a2c+(y-x)2+b2c

Now, as the Fermat’s Principle says, we need to find the minimum time the light is

able to travel along path r1 and r2. We can just find the differential of t with respect to

x (a, b, c, y are constants) and make the differential equals to 0. They we can get,

dtdx=xx2+a2-y-x(y-x)2+b2=0

That is

xx2+a2=y-x(y-x)2+b2

From the figure 1, we can see

cosθ=cosϑ

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Shengchen
December 5th, 2008
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Derive the law of reflection and the law of refraction from Fermat’s
Principle

Where θ is the green angle in the figure and ϑ is the brown one. Then we have

proved that the green angle is equal to the brown angle. Thus, the blue angle is equal

to the red angle or the angle of reflection equals the angle of incidence.

The proof is finished.

The proof of the law of refraction

Snell’s law of refraction states that

n1sinθ1=n2sinθ2

where n1 and n2 are the indices of refraction in the two media.

The incident ray, the reflected ray, the refracted ray, and the normal

to the surface all lie in the same plane.

Figure 2

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Shengchen
December 5, 2008
Derive the law 5of reflection and the law of refraction from Fermat’s
Principle

We can find in Figure 2 that a light is supposed to travel in path r1 and r2.

The indices of refraction of these two mediums are n1 and n2 respectively. All

the angles and length of router is labeled with a, b, d, x and a, b, d are

constants.

By the basic knowledge and with the same reason, we can derive a

expression of the time that light travels by path r1 and r2 that is

t(x)=r1v1+r2v2=a2+x2cn1+b2+(d-x)2cn2

And now we are going to find the extreme value of t or t(x). By the

knowledge of advanced mathematics, we know that in order to gain a

extreme value of t, we should find the a point such that t’(x)=0, that is,

dtdx=n1xca2+x2-n2(d-x)cb2+(d-x)2=0

Or

n1∙xa2+x2=(d-x)b2+(d-x)2∙n2

From Figure 2, we can see that

sinθ1=xa2+x2, andsinθ2=(d-x)b2+(d-x)2

That is to say

n1sinθ1=n2sinθ2

The proof is finished.

Composed by Li
Shengchen
December 5th, 2008
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Derive the law of reflection and the law of refraction from Fermat’s
Principle

Conclusion

From the process of proof, we can see that these two basic optical laws we

have learnt in junior school are just two further conclusion of Fermat’s

Principle. And the method of proving is pretty similar. It is sure that from

Fermat’s principle, we can derive more complex conclusions.

Reference

University Physics, Chapter 35 (Provided by Professor Jin)

Composed by Li
Shengchen
December 5, 2008