What is Fermat's Principle?

sequoianoir

"The actual path between two points taken by a beam of light is the one which is traversed in the least time." It may be reformulated slightly in terms of optical path length as "Light, in going between two points, traverses the route having the smallest optical path length." Its modern form is "A light ray, in going between two points, must traverse as optical path length which is stationary with respect to variations of the path." In this formulation, the paths may be maxima, minima, or saddle points. Jan 24 04, 8:39 AM

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