In class today we were given an introduction on the properties of light, and also the basics of microscopy.
Q: When does light travel in straight lines?
A: When it doesn't!
There are a umber of reasons why light does not travel in a straight line. When light travels through a medium such as a prism, it can change directions. Additionally, a large gravitational force such as the sun can bend light.
Biophotnics 1/26/09
Geometric Optics is a field of optics that seeks to explain how light travels, generally as a particle. In class we discussed reflection, diffraction, refraction.
Diffraction is the bending of light as it passes around the edge of an object (1)
Refraction occurs as light travels from one medium to another changing its speed and direction. This can be seen by placing an object in water (2)
Reflection: When a wave approaches a reflecting surface, such as a mirror, the wave that strikes the surface is called the incident wave, and the one that bounces back is called the reflected wave (3)
When I searching on the interned about these three different properties of light I cam across the optical phenomenon Glory. In this phenomenon light is reflected, refracted and diffracted.
After learning about the different ways that light travels we got together with our groups and looked at different lenses. In this experiment we wanted to observe how light travels through certain lenses. When looking though one of the lenses the image appeared to be inverted. Videos of the experiment can be seen below:
Videos will be posted Shortly!
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In class we also we introduced to the parts of a microscope. We learned our to look at skin cells under the microscope.
Sources
(1) http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/opt/mch/diff.rxml
(2) http://www.ps.missouri.edu/rickspage/refract/refraction.html
(3) http://www.tpub.com/neets/tm/106-3.htm
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