"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:4a75aa3e@news.povray.org...
> Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:

> >         I find it disturbing that Wikipedia's article on refraction has
no
> > actual physical explanation

>   Does science even fully agree on the physics of refraction?

Yes, AFAIK, but the "problem" is that there are many levels of
understanding. Our everyday experiences can be a hindrance when trying to
understand things at a more "fundamental" level. Refraction (reflection,
dispersion, ...etc) are all emergent and not fundamental processes in QFT,
for instance. There, all you have are 1) emission of a photon  2) absorption
of a photon and the boring case of 3) unhindered transmission of a photon.
There's practically no common ground as far as the fundamental processes go
with classical wave mechanics. But it turns out, that within applicable
domains, their conclusions/predictions agree, and where they don't, we
realize we are out of the respective applicable domains.

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