Word.ws English Dictionary

Snell's law

/snɛlz lɔ/

Snell's law proper noun: the law that, for a ray incident on the interface of two media, the sine of the angle of incidence times the index of the refraction of the first medium is equal to the sine of the angle of refraction times the index of refraction of the second medium.

Proper noun

Snell's law

  1. the law that, for a ray incident on the interface of two media, the sine of the angle of incidence times the index of the refraction of the first medium is equal to the sine of the angle of refraction times the index of refraction of the second medium
    Synonyms:
    Descartes law, law of refraction, Snell-Descartes law

Synonyms of Snell's law

Origin of Snell's law

For Willebrord van Roijen Snell, Dutch mathematician.

Questions about Snell's law

What does Snell's law mean?
Snell's law means the law that, for a ray incident on the interface of two media, the sine of the angle of incidence times the index of the refraction of the first medium is equal to the sine of the angle of refraction times the index of refraction of the second medium.
What part of speech is Snell's law?
Snell's law is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Snell's law?
Snell's law is pronounced /snɛlz lɔ/.

Words near Snell's law in the dictionary

  1. snekke
  2. sneks
  3. Snelgrove
  4. Snelgroves
  5. snell
  6. Snell's law
  7. snelled
  8. Snellen
  9. Snellen chart
  10. Snellen charts
  11. Snellen test

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Snell's law (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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