A fish looks up toward the surface of a pond and sees the entire panorama of clouds, sky, birds, and so on, contained in a narrow cone of light, beyond which there is darkness. What is going on here to produce this vision? How large (in degrees) is the opening angle of the cone of light received by the fish?

Question

Meredith Proctor

Physics

15 December, 21:26

A fish looks up toward the surface of a pond and sees the entire panorama of clouds, sky, birds, and so on, contained in a narrow cone of light, beyond which there is darkness. What is going on here to produce this vision? How large (in degrees) is the opening angle of the cone of light received by the fish?

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Kinsley Carpenter · Answer 1

Total internal reflection is going on. The refractive index of water is about 1.3, so sin 90/sin r=1/sinr=1.3. So the fish can only see objects outside the water within about 50 degrees of the vertical