Question

In your own words and not copied from the web please.

Optical fibers are made from glass or plastic and generally have an index of refraction of about 1.45. They are commonly used in telecommunications and computer networks.

Identify and describe a specific application for fiber optics? What kind of information can they transmit? What advantages do they have over other materials or technologies? Explain how optical fibers work and the role of total internal reflection of light within.

Answer 1

Sol:

Optical communication is one of the most important application of optical fibre. This consists of a system of a transmitter, a receiver and an information pathway. First a non - electrical signal is converted into electrical signal by a transducer, since these signals are of low frequency so they now be superposed on a carrier wave of high frequency this is called modulation, now the message is received by the receiver, receiver demodulate the wave and separate the original messageand feed to transducer which will convert it to the initial non - electrical signal.

Optical fibre can transmit audio , video , and , images etc.

They are cheaper , smaller in size , light in weight flexible and strong.

They are not harmful and have wider bandwidth.

And there is also very low loss in transmission.

Optical fibre is made in such a way that light incident on core is incident at an angle greater then the critical angle of the core so the ray suffer total internal reflection and hence the ray proceed further by successive total internal reflection. Optical fibre consist of core which is innermost layer , cladding which is layer above core and shealth outermost layer to protect the fibre. The refractive index of core is greater then cladding and of cladding is greater then shealth. Due to the total internal reflection the loss in strength is very low the only loss is due to the diffusion of light into the cladding incident at an angle less then critical angle of core.