ABSTRACT
In the previous chapters, the development for determining radiative transfer within a translucent medium was for materials that have a simple refractive index n ≈ 1. This has application when the absorbing, emitting, and scattering medium is a gas, since almost all gases have a refractive index very close to 1 [Lide (2008)] (Table 17.1). However, many important effects result from the refractive indices n > 1 possessed by many common materials, such as those in the table. The most obvious effects are reection and refraction at an interface as formulated in Chapters 3 and 14; these phenomena are very important in the behavior of translucent coatings, thin lms, and multiple windows. Another important effect of n > 1 is to increase local blackbody emission within a medium by a factor of n2, as discussed in Section 1.5.8.
