Determination of the refractive index of water and glass using smartphone cameras by estimating the apparent depth of an object

TL;DR

This paper presents a method using smartphone cameras to accurately measure the refractive index of water and glass by estimating the apparent depth of objects, achieving high precision with accessible technology.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to determine refractive indices using smartphone cameras and apparent depth measurements, achieving four-digit accuracy.

Findings

Refractive index of water measured with high precision.

Refractive index of glass determined for different thicknesses.

Method achieves micron-level accuracy in focal length estimation.

Abstract

A smartphone camera can be used for measuring the width and distance of an object by taking its photograph. The focal length of the camera lens can be determined very accurately by finding the image width of an object on the camera sensor to micron level accuracy. The level of accuracy achieved with the help of camera sensors, allows us to determine the refractive index of water upto four significant digits by finding the apparent depth of an object immersed in it. We have also measured the refractive index of glass by the same method, using three glass slides of different thicknesses, the smallest being 1.2 mm.