Technological advancement has brought forth a wide range of accessible and innovative tools that can be integrated into the teaching of physics, making it more dynamic and interactive. In this context, smartphones emerge as versatile and powerful devices capable of performing a variety of tasks and precise measurements.1–3 This article addresses a didactic proposal that uses smartphones to determine optical characteristics of acrylic plates, exploring the relationship between fundamental concepts of optics and the technology present in students’ daily lives.
In our analysis, we will consider that light is incident perpendicularly on a transparent material of thickness L, immersed in air. In this case, the coefficients of reflection (R) and transmission (T) can be determined as functions of the refractive indices of the media according to Eqs. (1) and (2), respectively4:
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