In activity one, you found that light reflects completely when you’re past the critical angle.
that’s the classical answer. as is often the case, the quantum answer is fuzzier. the laser in
this experiment is hitting the back wall of the prism at an angle greater than the critical angle,
but the light is going through anyway. because we know the of the
material very well, the of the light is known very accurately. by the
this means that the of a photon is
this means that some photons skip the barrier between the first prism and the air completely,
and form a funny thing called an evanescent wave which can go between the two prisms.
this process is called tunneling.