Why do heat waves make what you’re seeing bend? Like the space above a fire?
In: Physics
Heat causes the air to expand, and the differences in air density causes light to noticeably bend when passing from thinner to thicker air.
Basically, in the case of both fires and hot ground, hot air rises and interacts with cooler air in little pockets. That means you have lots of tiny pockets of hot air rising around pockets of cooler air with different densities. When light is travelling theough a substance and encounters something with a different density, it often gets bent ( think water, glass, etc). The shimmery, wavy look of the air is basically the result of light being bent as it travels through these pockets of warmer and cooler air of different densities.
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