Fermat's principle
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In the Vinony graph
Vinony's link graph records 76 inbound references to Fermat's principle, and connects out to Huygens–Fresnel principle, physical optics and Cairo.
It is catalogued under topics including Calculus of variations, Geometrical optics and History of physics.
Vinony links it to 43 Wikipedia language editions.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- variational principle
- Named after
- Pierre de Fermat
Show 3 more facts
- name in kana
- フェルマーのげんり
- inception
- 1662-01-01
- described by source
- Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~38 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Fig. 1: Fermat's principle in the case of refraction of light at a flat surface between (say) air and water. Given an object-point A in the air, and an observation point B in the water, the refraction point P is that which minimizes the time taken by the light to travel the path APB. Seeking the required value of x shows that the angles α and β satisfy Snell's law.
Fermat's principle, also known as the principle of least time, is the link between ray optics and wave optics. Fermat's principle states that the path taken by a ray between two given points is the path that can be traveled in the least time.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Fermat's principle” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.