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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by SineBot (talk | contribs) at 19:33, 14 June 2011 (Signing comment by 98.101.136.218 - "interference: new section"). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Section Technique implies that ray tracing, in physics, always allows for a gradual variation in the index of refraction. That is not true. For example, in optics, usually refraction is allowed only at the surface of objects or at the interface of media, each of which is assumed to have uniform index of refraction. In fact, that is the raison d'être for gradient-index optics.

Ray tracing in the atmosphere

I added a link in the Section radio signals to an application in Computation of radiowave attenuation in the atmosphere.--Thuytnguyen48 (talk) 15:16, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

interference

Ray tracing can be used to reproduce wave interference. This is possible by computing the phase of each ray. There are examples in the literature that demonstrate this, for example, to calculate the internal electric field of a liquid droplet. Perhaps we could soften the last statement in the introduction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.101.136.218 (talk) 19:32, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]