Stormy RefractionDavid van WingerdenAward: Top 100
School: homeschool When our flight out of Boston was delayed due to storms, I looked out the rain streaked window and saw tiny, upside down images of the outside in the water droplets. I took a photo and later realized how the laws of physics created the crystal clear inverted image of the plane's wing that caught my attention. The water droplets on the window form small globules due to cohesion. Water molecules form strong hydrogen bonds with other water molecules to form small, imperfect spheres on the plane window. Due to the curvature of the spheres, these water droplets act as small convex, or converging, lenses. Because water has a higher refractive index than air, light bends more when passing through water than air. To form these images of the surroundings, the incident light reflected off the plane's wing and storms and passed through the water droplet. The water droplet refracted the light inward towards the focal point where the image would form correctly orientated; however, when I took this picture, I was beyond the focal point, which is the point at which the light rays meet after refraction. As a result, the image appears inverted. 
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