— Why does heat distort what I see?
In: Physics
You know how water refracts light differently from air? That’s why a straw in a glass of water looks like it is bent.
Well, air also changes refraction depending on temperature. If it’s just generally very hot or very cold everywhere you won’t notice a difference, but if there are temperature differences, hot air will rise up. Along the way the hot and cold air will swirl around a bit and that means you have areas with different refraction swirling around.
It’s most noticeable when you have some heat source at the bottom (like hot asphalt) that heats the air at the bottom and makes it rise up.
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