>>11822303>>11822311>>11822314>>11822756Patently incorrect.
>>11822327Observationally true but does not offer a mechanistic explanation.
>>11822364>>>/x/>>11822271See:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUjt36SD3h8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiHN0ZWE5bkBasically light is just an EM wave and it interacts with the electrons of a medium, causing them to oscillate and radiate their own EM waves. The incoming light and atomic radiation combine and interfere to produce a wave packet with slower group velocity.
This is just a classical picture, where the electrons are just something like a lattice of Lorentz oscillators. But it's perfectly sufficient for describing everyday refraction.
But I'm not a fan of how the videos explain the quantum picture, because path integrals are just inserting a bunch of resolutions of the identity until you arrive at an integral which you can (somewhat) evaluate. The "Feynman picture" should not be taken literally, IMO.
The main problem is that photons themselves are a very nuanced concept. You can't explain how photons behave to someone who doesn't even know what photons are.
