refract

Our legal institutions and the broader culture refract their policy values back at each other.

From Slate ● May 26, 2026

Their stories reflect and refract the themes of “On the Road” for today.

From Salon ● Jul. 30, 2025

Unlike the shallow foveae found in human eyes, bird eyes have deep central foveae, which refract the incoming light to a large extent.

From Science Daily ● May 30, 2024

“We mourn her loss but it’s a comfort to know that her penetrating works will dazzle, shine and refract in the minds of readers for generations to come,” Farmer said.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 17, 2023

But it could not show the mechanism which causes light to reflect or refract, or the particles that cause smells.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

To work around this, I decided to use a 'star filter' - a layer of glass attached to the front of the lens that refracts light in a specific way.

From BBC ● Dec. 25, 2025

We might be told that color has something to do with light, or even be shown a prism, through which light refracts to produce a rainbow.

From Salon ● Nov. 16, 2024

“Brat” was the critical and commercial peak of Charli’s career, and the academy rewarded her up and down the program, with a second-highest seven nominations for a messy meta-rave about how fame refracts femininity.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 8, 2024

In the retina of an animal's eye, there is a small pit called the fovea that refracts the light entering the eye.

From Science Daily ● May 30, 2024

Sunlight refracts through it and casts slivers of rainbows across the floor.

From "Allegiant" by Veronica Roth

The French come closest to a grand national idea—liberté, egalité, fraternité, although this is refracted through repeated failures to convert those principles into stable governance.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026

Every subsequent loss is refracted through that lens.

From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2025

Susan Seidelman’s new memoir, ‘Desperately Seeking Something,’ traces the arc of American film over the last 45 years as refracted through her singular career.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 19, 2024

The reddish color comes from the light being refracted by particles in the atmosphere.

From Slate ● Apr. 5, 2024

The north wall of the Library was made entirely of glass, with doors leading to a terraced greenhouse that refracted light like a prism.

From "The Reader" by Traci Chee

Mr. Self has great fun refracting the details of who did what to whom and where.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 20, 2026

Democritus believed that light refracting through atoms caused the phenomenon that we perceive and describe conventionally, or by mutual agreement, as color.

From Salon ● Nov. 16, 2024

Smartphones can act as anxiety incubators, amplifying the sense of abundant possibility like a prism refracting light.

From Slate ● Aug. 3, 2024

Low-lying clouds and precipitation, they realized, were refracting echoes from the shoreline back to the radar, much as a glass lens bends the path of visible light.

From Science Magazine ● Nov. 17, 2023

In a reflecting telescope the image is magnified by a curved mirror, while in a refracting telescope it is magnified by passing through a lens.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton