to refract
1
7.5
- verb
- /rɪˈfrækt/
- Specialized
:
refractar
- The dome on top of the highest tower, named Torreon del Caballero, is where a small refracting telescope was installed in 1878.
- refracting telescope
- refract light
Examples
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The first essentially consists of the fact that the lens does not only refract light and draw a negative impression on the film, but also divides it up into its constituent color parts.
Academic text (2000) -
In this case, the rays enter normal to the sphere surface and are therefore not refracted.
Academic text (1995) -
Light refracts in the myopic's lenses. I have seen him up there quite a lot.
Fiction book (1992) -
People were still discussing whether the future didn't belong to refracting telescopes.
Fiction book (1995) -
The shape of the refracting material—the lens—also changes the image we see coming from the source.
Blog text (7) -
The non-linear story bends and refracts between a long poem at the beginning, written in the voice of a renowned poet, and several hundred pages of commentary in the appendix, added posthumously by his obsessed colleague.
Blog text (32) -
The scientist helped students understand how to refract light with a simple lens demonstration.
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To study the properties of light, they learned how to refract it using different glass shapes.
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In the lab, we experimented to refract the laser beam using a prism.
Surface Forms
Morphology
refract = re + fract
Although analyzable as re- + fract historically, the combining form 'fract' is not a standalone English word and the specialized optical sense is not transparently derived for average learners.
Etymology
Refract (in the technical sense 'to measure the refracting power') also comes from re- 'back' and fract 'break'. So to refract a lens is to test how much it 'breaks' or bends light, which explains the modern measuring meaning.