Almost all of us have seen a mirage. But at the time, we might not know him.
Erin Marquishe had already explained the optical illusions in driving, as the reason a mobile phone can see the road better than the driver during bad weather, so he thought he could also address the most common of all driving illusions: the mirage.
The light is complicated. The way it reacts and how our brains perceive it depends on the medium that light crosses.
When a road spends all day to the sun, Free a huge amount of heateven after the air around him began to cool. This heat causes the air molecules to spread, making the hot air thinner and holding it under a thicker and colder air layer.
When the light reaches the colder and more humid air, the diminu light speedI. When it reaches the warmer air, accelerates and refractory, that is, it changes direction, which creates what hippies Science call “A reversal layer“.
The rays of light that would normally reach the road and would be countered directly to our eye, showing us an asphalt stretch, end up bending up, dispersing the light that the eye receives.
The effect is similar to the way light is dispersed on the surface of the water, which is why produces the sparkling effect.
This reversal layer is temporaria, since the hot air, being lighter than the cold, goes up and cools through a circular process known as convection. The heat of the road creates a microclimate that feeds on sunlight.
Like any system in physics, everything wants to move into a state of less energy – in this case, losing thermal energy.
Thus, the air closer to the earth cools rapidly at the ground level, as the heat dissipates to the colder air layer above, which is why only mirages are seen after long hot days and soapssince the road cools rapidly and sunlight is necessary to create the effect.
Alternatively, an inversion layer effect happens more often the opposite – with hot air on cold air – on a much larger scale.
If cold air denser and high pressure is attached near the ground under a hot air layer, water in the air forms droplets that turn into fog and fog.
This is why the fog forms in the masses of water, since they lose heat quickly, Creating a layer of cold, damp air under the hot air.
Teresa Oliveira Campos, Zap //
