Smartphone photography based determination of refractive index of liquid

Abstract

Abstract A simple but useful method is presented to measure the refractive index of a liquid using the smartphone camera. We have measured the image lengths by utilizing the ImageMeter application (free online) and determine the refractive index directly. We mention some striking points based upon which this simple method can be considered robust and novel: (i) no extra device other than the smartphone is required; (ii) there is no need to know the focal length of the camera lens of the smartphone; (iii) instead of finding the size of the object, only the image sizes of the object in different conditions are to be measured in pixel units to determine the refractive index of the liquid.