Road surface mirage:A bunch of hot air?

作     者：ZHOU HuaiChun HUANG ZhiFeng CHENG Qiang LU We QIU Kui CHEN Chen HSU Pei-feng 

作者机构：State Key Laboratory of Coal Combustion School of Energy and Power Engineering Huazhong University of Science and Technology Wuhan 430074 China Department of Mechamcal and Aerospace Engineering Florida Institute of Technology Melbourne FL 32901-6975 USA 

出 版 物：《Chinese Science Bulletin》 (中国科学通报)

年 卷 期：2011年第56卷第10期

页      面：962-968页

核心收录：

学科分类：07[理学] 070601[理学-气象学] 0706[理学-大气科学] 

基　　金：supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(50636010,50721005) the Program of Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities of China(B06019) 

主　　题：海市蜃楼 热空气 路面 表面散射 温度梯度 镜面反射 折射现象 光线折射 

摘      要：The inferior mirage from road surfaces is a common phenomenon,which can be easily seen in everyday *** has been recognized in the literature as a light refraction phenomenon due to the refractive index gradient caused by the temperature gradient in the air strata above the road ***,it was also suggested that the mirage is just a phenomenon of specular reflection at grazing *** of the lack of reasonable and quantitative evidence,the generally accepted light refraction theory has not yet been *** we show some mirror-like reflection images captured from a road surface stretch in Yujiashan North Road,Wuhan,China,when there was no obvious temperature gradient on or above the road,measured on a winter day in December *** provided direct evidence to doubt the temperature induced light refraction mechanism of the inferior ***,the critical grazing angle of about 0.2° to the road plane where the mirror-like reflection appears could not make the rough surface scatter incident light as a smooth surface according to the Rayleigh *** the phenomenon is a mirrorlike observation effect of scattering from the surface,which cannot be entirely explained by light refraction via air *** results demonstrate that the image-formation mechanism and the observer-based-analysis method shown here potentially offer a means of understanding a wide range of scattering phenomena from rough surfaces at grazing angle;for example,the superior mirages of unusual brightness occasionally observed over frozen lakes and the off-specular reflection phenomenon.