Journal Entry 10/5

Conclusion To Today's Lab: To find the distance between the initial ray and the refracted ray, I used the trigonometric tool, SOH CAH TOA. I knew the distance between the wall and the laser adn the angle, after using Snell's law. Our equation was: tan 11.22 = x/670.56. When we solved for x, we got 133 cm. However, when we actually measured the distance between the two rays we got 126 cm. We then calculated our margin of error, again using SOH CAH TOA This time we knew the base of the triangle and the side and wanted to find the angle. Our equation was: arctan (126/670.56) = x. X equaled 10.64. This meant that our measurement of 11.22 degrees was off by 0.58 degrees. Looking at the protractor however, we concluded that a more precise measurement could not have been produced. Therefore, our measurement is accurate. I forgot to mention that in order to determine where the refracted point would hit the wall, we needed to set up another SOH CAH TOA equation. The triangle led us to the equation: tan 15 = x/61. X equaled 16.34 cm. We shifted the laser 16.34 cm and thus were able to continue the experiment.