Creative Optics Experiment Ideas for First-Year Physics Students

[Synetos]

So I need to do an optics experiment for my first year of physics at uni, the problem is that we are limited with material and that you need to be original, which is almost an contradiction =/

Does anybody have an idea for a cool experiment?
(and yea the double slit one has been done)

 

[Andy Resnick]

A few:

Measure the track spacing of a DVD.
make a fiber-based strain gauge.
construct a optical image-processing system to do, for example, edge detection.

Any of these can be done with just a laser, a few lenses, some fiber (for #2) and a CCD detector.