The Student Room Group

Total Internal Reflection help

How come light is never refracted in a fibre optic cable? Surely at some point the light will hit the boundary at an angle that is smaller than the critical angle.
Yep - and it's a good thing when it happens because light travelling at a significant angle from the axis travels a great distance and causes greater multipath dispersion.

You can say all the light coming out of the far end of a fibre didn't get refracted - but certainly not all of the light going into the fibre comes out the other end and the missing light isn't all absorbed in the glass.

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