Question

Differentiate between a wavefront and a ray.

What is the difference between a ray and a wavefront?

Answer 1

	Wavefront	Ray
(i)	A wavefront is a surface that represents points in a medium that are in phase (i.e., oscillating in synchrony) with each other.	A ray is a straight line representing the path along which light travels.
(ii)	It’s perpendicular to the direction of propagation of the wave.	It’s used to simplify the description of light propagation, particularly in geometric optics.