Black and White and Bent All OverAlyssa HuangAward: Top 100
School: the branson school As we sat around the Thanksgiving table, I caught a glimpse of my mother's fingers through her wine glass. Her fingers looked deformed and broken, seemingly detached from the rest of her hand. Yikes! I nudged my Dad and hissed, "Dad, check out Mom's hand through the wine glass!" Dad peered and then chuckled, tousling my hair (I was 9 years old at the time). "That's called refraction, " he said, "It's like a scientific magic trick..." Now I'm in high schooler - taking physics and finally old enough to explain this phenomenon more "scientifically." When light passes through a glass filled with water, it undergoes refraction. Refraction is the bending of light as it passes from one medium to another medium that has a different density. Specifically, as light moves from air into water, light slows down and bends towards the normal (an imaginary line perpendicular to the surface). This bending causes light rays to change direction, giving the appearance of the objects viewed through the glass being shifted or distorted. I took this photo to demonstrate how light bends as it passes through different mediums. Rather than displaying distorted fingers, I decided to be a bit more artistic and less grotesque: in this photo, I use vertically striped wrapping paper taped to the corner of my kitchen counter. My goal in using striped paper was to exaggerate how refraction can make straight objects (lines) appear distorted. 
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