According to Snell’s law, the refractive index of a medium with respect to air is defined as the following :
\( \frac{\sin i}{\sin r} \)
Snell's law of refraction states that when light passes from one medium to another, the ratio of the sine of the angle of incidence to the sine of the angle of refraction is constant for a given pair of media.
For light going from air (angle of incidence i) into a medium (angle of refraction r), this constant is the refractive index of the medium with respect to air: \( n = \frac{\sin i}{\sin r} \).
Check: a denser medium bends light towards the normal, so r is less than i, giving \( \sin i \gt \sin r \) and \( n \gt 1 \), as expected; a ratio of the angles themselves is not the law.
Hence, \( \frac{\sin i}{\sin r} \).
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