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Snells law and refraction Refraction at a plane interface. Derivation of Snell's law. Experimental determination of refractive index. Examples. |
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Newton's prisms Dispersing white light into component colours, then recombinging them. |
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Mirages and the Green Flash Refraction from air with a thermally induced density gradient. Inferior mirages. 'Floating islands. The green flash. |
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Dispersion and chromatic aberration The refractive index varies with wavelength, therefore so does the focal length of a simple lens, giving chromatic dispersion in the image. |
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Total internal reflection No refraction if the angle of incidence exceeds the critical angle. |
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Optical fibres and cladding Total internal reflection in an optical fiber. Adding cladding reduces pulse broadening. |
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Chromatic dispersion, rainbows and Alexander's dark band Dispersion on refraction produces rainbows. One internal reflection gives the primary (40°) rainbow, two gives the secondary (50°) bow. |
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Colour of the sky Scattering varies strongly with wavelength. Scattered light gives the blue of the sky, and the unscattered light gives the red or orange of a sunset. |
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Mirrors and images Plane mirrors and virtual images. Inverted images. Real images in a concave mirror. Parabolic reflectors. Fermat's principle. Focusing with mirrors. Aberration. The mirror equation. Convex mirrors. Distortion. |
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Lenses and images Focussing and forming images with lenses. How to draw ray diagrams. Relating object and image distance to focal length (theory and experiment). |
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Microscopes and magnifiers The magnifier or simple microscope. The compound microscope and ray diagrams. |
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Reflecting Newtonian telescope Parabolic reflector and the Newtonian or reflecting telescope. |
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Refracting telescope Refracting telescope: two converging lenses produces a virtual, inverted image. |
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Acoustic telescope Parabolic reflector for sound. Compare with Newtonian telescope. Wavelength limitations. |
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Geometrical Optics Experiments |
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