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I just came across a nice explanation for light refraction, where you imagine a car hitting a medium at an angle, which causes one part of the car to travel faster than the other, eventually affecting in the whole light ray to bend in one particular direction. You can see what I mean here.
So, does a sound wave too bend in a slower medium in a similar way? Can I use the same example to understand sound wave refraction?
Yes, it's a standard analogy for all wave refraction. The idea is, you follow a plane of given phase, called a "wave front", and assume that locations of given phase move at the local wave speed. When the front hits a boundary that slows down part of it, those points of fixed phase move more slowly, so the wavefront is retarded. As the line of this retardation advances along the oblique wavefront, the wavefront turns into the region where it is slowing down, or away from a region where it is speeding up. Considering torque on a rigid body is a limited analogy that should not be taken too literally, but it seems to share many of the same features and helps you get the idea.
