Re: Microscopic effects that cause the Brewster Angle

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

al brown wrote [off list]:
> The incident wave applies an E field,hence a (driving)force on the
> atoms in the medium that the wave is transmitted in, creating a dipole.
> These oscilate at the same freq as the driving force.

OK

> That is fine, but
> does this ONLY apply to the atoms which are at the point of contact of the
> incident beam at the interface

no

> or does the incident wave apply an E field to
> ALL the atoms throughout the medium and hence create dipoles every where in
> the medium.

yes

> I assume then that you have to sum all the reeradiated waves
> from each dipole

yes

> and a lot of detsructive interference occurs leaving a line
> of construcive interefence that is the reflected light.

Be careful, that's ambiguous at best.

For the "interesting" polarization (in the plane of the
scattering, i.e. perpendicular to the plane of the surface)
if you look in the Brewster direction there is no
interference because there was no radiation in that direction
to begin with.

For the other polarization, there is all sorts of constructive
and destructive interference.  Each re-radiator contributes
its bit.  In the direction of the reflected wave, the
interferences is mostly constructive.

> Is this also the cause of the transmitted light aswell?

1) Don't get me started about "causation" :-)
  http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/physics/causation.htm

2) Constructive and destructive interference is part of
the explanation of the transmitted light.  The re-radiated
light interferes with the incident light (which otherwise
would have continued straight through) and this explains
why the transmitted beam is bent (refracted).  If you
look in the direction of the transmitted beam, the
interference is mostly constructive.