Captured Between Two Worlds
Owen Cantore
Award: Top 100
School: leigh high school/campbell union high school district
Teacher: marita beard
Category: Contrived
Photo #19744
Captured Between Two Worlds
Originally, I wanted to take a photo of just the rainbow from the prism for a physics activity, but I got another idea. I decided to hold the prism up to the lens of my camera, and it created this effect. Three images are created: one normal, one blurred/inverted, and one inverted/colorful.
The main reason for this phenomenon is the refractive angles of the prism; along with chromatic aberration specifically in the right side. The prism acts as an optic. On the left, with no optic, the captured image appears to be normal. In the middle, some light rays from the door refract (due to the change in medium) through the right side of the prism, but others reflect. Since light moves from a lower refractive index (air) to a higher refractive index (glass), at the angle I took some total internal reflection occurs. This reflection interferes with the rays within the prism, making the middle image blurred. As for the horizontal inversion, rays enter the prism from the right side of the image, are reflected, and enter the camera lens on the left side (and vice versa). Finally, in the right image, it is horizontally inverted for the same reason, except now, since light enters the left side of the prism, refraction causes the rays to bend when moving from the inside of the prism to the air of the lens. This causes chromatic aberration where the colors separate, explaining why the objects appear multicolored.
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