Optics Forum

Threads

Undergrad Lightspeed fast, then slowed, then fast again.

  • mapper
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Undergrad What is the Effect of Brewster's Angle on Refracted Light?

  • kususe
  • · Replies 2 ·
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2

High School Why Does the Sky Appear Red at Sunrise/Sunset?

  • AlchemistK
  • · Replies 4 ·
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4

High School Optical Illusion of Water on Pavement

  • starzero
  • · Replies 8 ·
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8

Undergrad Reflections in Transmission lines

  • likephysics
  • · Replies 5 ·
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5

Undergrad Double Slit Experiment on Refracted light?

  • Technocreep
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

Graduate Trying to understand a constant in the phase shift (or difference?) of 2 waves

  • fluidistic
  • · Replies 3 ·
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3

Undergrad Does light reflect at 90 degrees from a moving angled mirror?

  • h1a8
  • · Replies 3 ·
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3

High School Why Does Single-Slit Diffraction Create a Pattern of Maxima and Minima?

  • Theo1
  • · Replies 3 ·
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3

Undergrad Why Are Only Sodium Spectral Lines Visible in Sodium Vapor Lamps?

  • bejoynp
  • · Replies 6 ·
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6

Graduate Questions on Waves: Answers to 3 Questions

  • fluidistic
  • · Replies 2 ·
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2

Undergrad Has the speed of light remained constant throughout history?

  • kellystone84
  • · Replies 8 ·
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8

Graduate Do conservation laws hold when 3D objects pass through a 2D plane?

  • omoplata
  • · Replies 7 ·
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7

Graduate Why normalize Jones vectors with 1/√2

  • atomqwerty
  • · Replies 5 ·
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5

High School Ray Type of Bulb Light Emission

  • egerol1
  • · Replies 4 ·
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4

Graduate Lens calculation problem (Optics)

  • mhjerde
  • · Replies 5 ·
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5

Graduate How does circularly polarized light rotate a body?

  • Khrapko
  • · Replies 16 ·
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16

High School Can light exert force on objects?

  • logical
  • · Replies 21 ·
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21

High School How efficient is a microwave oven

  • Pengwuino
  • · Replies 12 ·
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12

High School Why could we see a laser hologram?

  • Stanley514
  • · Replies 5 ·
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5

Undergrad Traveling at speed of light, and time.

  • OrionVTOL
  • · Replies 4 ·
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4

Undergrad Is Simplifying Snell's Law to n1θ1=n2θ2 Valid for Small Angles?

  • rjs523
  • · Replies 3 ·
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3

Graduate Aligning a Michelson interferometer

  • johng23
  • · Replies 5 ·
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5

Graduate Luminance of a lambertian sphere (formula)

  • henksp
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

Undergrad How Does Microwave Wattage Affect Standing Waves?

  • NicolePue
  • · Replies 8 ·
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8

Graduate Can Diffraction Effects be Removed with an Interferometer?

  • BigTanker22
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

High School Why don't we emit radio waves

  • LogicalAcid
  • · Replies 19 ·
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19

Undergrad How X-rays Compress Matter for Nuclear Fusion

  • cdotter
  • · Replies 2 ·
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2

High School Why does an apple reflect red light but absorb other colors?

  • LogicalAcid
  • · Replies 2 ·
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2

Undergrad What happens to the energy in case of destructive interference ?

  • jonnyk
  • · Replies 6 ·
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6

High School Different ways to measure the speed of light experimentally ?

  • ATH500
  • · Replies 4 ·
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4

Undergrad Difference between phase difference and path difference

  • logearav
  • · Replies 5 ·
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5

High School Can camera flashes really damage historical sites?

  • saim_
  • · Replies 7 ·
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7

Undergrad Total internal reflection in a 45-degree cone

  • Smacal1072
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

Undergrad Green laser appears orange on red plastic but green when reflected

  • Mu naught
  • · Replies 9 ·
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9

Undergrad Can an Oscillator Generate Visible Light Through an Antenna?

  • ChrisAndre
  • · Replies 2 ·
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2

High School Snells Law and refractive index

  • jsmith613
  • · Replies 4 ·
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4

Graduate Is light really light outside the human brain?

  • zeromodz
  • · Replies 2 ·
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2

High School Where exactly is pure blue (in nanometers)?

  • hl_world
  • · Replies 8 ·
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8

Undergrad Can a Lens Create a Rainbow from a Broad Beam of Light?

  • notnow
  • · Replies 2 ·
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2

High School Are two-sided reflective dishes holograms?

  • sciboinkhobbes
  • · Replies 3 ·
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3

Graduate Magnifying a display without compromising exit pupil

  • zacherynuk
  • · Replies 2 ·
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2

High School Why the moon looks bigger at the horizon

  • daniel_i_l
  • · Replies 163 ·
6
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163

High School Can We Physically Detect Radio Waves?

  • LogicalAcid
  • · Replies 4 ·
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4

Undergrad Why does light bend at the edges of objects in diffraction?

  • IrshadAlam
  • · Replies 36 ·
2
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36

Graduate How close can 2 coherent photons be?

  • bwana
  • · Replies 5 ·
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5

High School Can a wave pass through an aperture smaller than its wavelength?

  • fluidistic
  • · Replies 2 ·
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2

High School Ultraviolet Curing to Make Metal Stronger

  • SNIPE
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

Undergrad Why use signed quantities in the mirror formula if it's derived from magnitudes

  • Ashu2912
  • · Replies 7 ·
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7

Graduate Can gravitational lensing reflect past images of our galaxy back to us?

  • caseytrimble
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

Undergrad If something emits visible light

  • LogicalAcid
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

High School Why can we see the light from a source from afar, but

  • LogicalAcid
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

Undergrad Why does the diffuse reflection BRDF divide by pi?

  • floater2011
  • · Replies 6 ·
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6

Graduate How Were Emission Lines Observed in Different Spectra Ranges?

  • jonlg_uk
  • · Replies 4 ·
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4

Graduate What is Hyper-Rayleigh and what is Hyper-Raman?

  • narra
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

Undergrad Optical power lost at a pinhole

  • lalligagger
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

High School Why does a single photon have a probability of reflection rather than a definite outcome?

  • cyberstu
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

High School Does a mirror or camera show what we actually see?

  • shredder666
  • · Replies 3 ·
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3

Undergrad Why does light suffer a phase change of π when reflected?

  • pardesi
  • · Replies 6 ·
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6

Undergrad How does wavelength affect diffraction angles in single and double slits?

  • seto6
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

Undergrad Why does Rutherford scattering angle depend inversely on detector distance?

  • Mr Bean
  • · Replies 6 ·
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6

Undergrad Why does light reflect from shiny surfaces rather than pass through?

  • A Dhingra
  • · Replies 26 ·
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26

Undergrad How Can a Near Object Be Focused While Looking at Distant Objects?

  • jstwinkles
  • · Replies 4 ·
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4

High School Why can AM radio waves travel over mountains while FM signals cannot?

  • Haftred
  • · Replies 4 ·
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4

Undergrad Composition of the sun and spectrum of light

  • Medicago
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

Undergrad Why does light travel at the speed it does?

  • kenimpzoom
  • · Replies 116 ·
4
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116

Graduate Detecting single photons - conceptual question

  • johng23
  • · Replies 11 ·
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11

Undergrad Time to reach light speed at 1G acceleration

  • Zigzagcom
  • · Replies 12 ·
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12

Undergrad Lens shapes other than conic sections

  • symbolipoint
  • · Replies 2 ·
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2

Undergrad Polar molecules like water Spin why?

  • maxsm
  • · Replies 2 ·
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2

High School Is invisibility really achieved?

  • Arslan
  • · Replies 3 ·
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3

Graduate How does the Hamaker Constant relate to the refractive indices of materials?

  • The-Exiled
  • · Replies 3 ·
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3

Undergrad Polarization and crystallography

  • rahulmotan
  • · Replies 6 ·
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6

Undergrad Meaning of Phase in stationary waves

  • zorro
  • · Replies 6 ·
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6

Undergrad Can a Radio Wave Camera Be Used to Track Wildlife in the Field?

  • peteypete
  • · Replies 5 ·
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5

Graduate Wavelength of photon in a medium

  • Muthu
  • · Replies 18 ·
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18

Undergrad Why can't waves (light) be in two mediums at the same time?

  • i_m_mimi
  • · Replies 2 ·
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2

Undergrad Could the speed of light be variable?

  • Dremmer
  • · Replies 4 ·
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4

Graduate Can Anomalous Dispersion Enhance Resonant Cavities for Solar Cell Applications?

  • material
  • · Replies 4 ·
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4

High School Why is light polarized when reflected from water?

  • akshay.wizard
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

Undergrad Radius of Photons? - Get Answers Here

  • Vector12
  • · Replies 2 ·
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2

Graduate Why Does the Angle of Refraction Change in Borosilicate Glass Experiments?

  • FeDeX_LaTeX
  • · Replies 3 ·
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3

Graduate Tyndall vs Rayleight Light Scattering

  • inigo
  • · Replies 2 ·
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2

Undergrad Spectral filtering of RGB components -

  • rpswift
  • · Replies 5 ·
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5

Graduate How does antenna tuning select the frequency of emitted photons?

  • kishushah
  • · Replies 10 ·
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10

Undergrad Happy and excited beams of light

  • Grimstone
  • · Replies 8 ·
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8

Undergrad Lens that will make the rays parallel to each other

  • kishushah
  • · Replies 7 ·
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7

Undergrad Why doesn't a biconvex lens cancel itself out and not change the light beam?

  • theonlywalks
  • · Replies 3 ·
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3

High School Why do telescopes have long barrels?

  • Pranav Jha
  • · Replies 11 ·
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11

Undergrad Why does red light travel faster than blue light in glass or water?

  • Pranav Jha
  • · Replies 18 ·
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18

High School Why is Huygens' principle so non-intuitive?

  • Pranav Jha
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

High School Why do objects appear farther away in convex mirrors if the image is closer to the mirror?

  • AlchemistK
  • · Replies 43 ·
2
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43

Undergrad Creating a Converging Lens for Sound Waves at the Exploratorium in San Francisco

  • Pranav Jha
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

Undergrad Why does sunlight reflect as a column on water?

  • Pranav Jha
  • · Replies 5 ·
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5

High School Does this person see the mirage as we do?

  • Pranav Jha
  • · Replies 2 ·
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2

High School Why does light bend when it passes through different mediums?

  • Draksis314
  • · Replies 4 ·
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4

High School Slanted Windows: Reducing Glare in Department Stores

  • Pranav Jha
  • · Replies 1 ·
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1

Undergrad Effect of thickness of atmosphere on the incident light on land

  • Pranav Jha
  • · Replies 3 ·
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3

High School Why Does a Nearby Light Source Produce a Blurry Shadow?

  • Pranav Jha
  • · Replies 18 ·
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18

Undergrad Understanding Rayleigh Scattering: Why do Atoms Scatter Light?

  • Pranav Jha
  • · Replies 2 ·
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2