Explore bending of light between two media with different indices of refraction. See how changing from air to water to glass changes the bending angle. Play with prisms of different shapes and make rainbows.

Students explore the many different ways that engineers provide natural lighting to interior spaces. They analyze various methods of daylighting by constructing model houses from foam core board and simulating the sun with a desk lamp. Teams design a daylighting system for their model houses based on their observations and calculations of the optimal use of available sunlight to their structure.

Principles and applications of electromagnetism, starting from Maxwell's equations, with emphasis on phenomena important to nuclear engineering and radiation sciences. Solution methods for electrostatic and magnetostatic fields. Charged particle motion in those fields. Particle acceleration and focussing. Collisons with charged particles and atoms. Electromagnetic waves, wave emission by accelerated particles, Bremsstrahlung. Compton scattering. Photoionization. Elementary applications to ranging, shielding, imaging, and radiation effects. This course is a graduate level subject on electromagnetic theory with particular emphasis on basics and applications to Nuclear Science and Engineering. The basic topics covered include electrostatics, magnetostatics, and electromagnetic radiation. The applications include transmission lines, waveguides, antennas, scattering, shielding, charged particle collisions, Bremsstrahlung radiation, and Cerenkov radiation.

In this introduction to light energy, students learn about reflection and refraction as they learn that light travels in wave form. Through hands-on activities, they see how prisms, magnifying glasses and polarized lenses work. They also gain an understanding of the colors of the rainbow as the visible spectrum, each color corresponding to a different wavelength.

In a hands-on way, students explore light's properties of absorption, reflection, transmission and refraction through various experimental stations within the classroom. To understand absorption, reflection and transmission, they shine flashlights on a number of preselected objects. To understand refraction, students create indoor rainbows. An understanding of the fundamental properties of light is essential to designing an invisible laser security system.

Fermat's principle of least time is used to derive Snell's law and the law of reflection.

How does a lens form an image? See how light rays are refracted by a lens. Watch how the image changes when you adjust the focal length of the lens, move the object, move the lens, or move the screen.

The Huygens-Fresnel principle, reflection and refraction.

Students learn and use the properties of light to solve the following challenge: "A mummified troll was discovered this summer at our school and it has generated lots of interest worldwide. The principal asked us, the technology classes, to design a security system that alerts the police if someone tries to pilfer our prized possession. How can we construct a system that allows visitors to view our artifact during the day, but invisibly protects it at night in a cost-effective way?"

In this video from the Encyclopedia of Physics Demonstrations, observe how a laser beam is trapped in a water jet because the light reflects against the surface of the water.

Students learn the basic properties of light the concepts of light absorption, transmission, reflection and refraction, as well as the behavior of light during interference. Lecture information briefly addresses the electromagnetic spectrum and then provides more in-depth information on visible light. With this knowledge, students better understand lasers and are better prepared to design a security system for the mummified troll.

Through an introduction to the design of lighting systems and the electromagnetic spectrum, students learn about the concept of daylighting as well as two types of light bulbs (lamps) often used in energy-efficient lighting design.

In this activity, students examine various materials and investigate how they interact with light. Students use five new vocabulary words (translucent, transparent, opaque, reflection and refraction) to describe how light interacts with the objects.

13 questions (with answers) on reflection, refraction, interference and diffraction. Some or all may be suitable as a revision worksheet, a homework assignment or for test papers.

This video segment adapted from Shedding Light on Science illustrates the dispersion of light through a prism and how raindrops refract sunlight to form rainbows.

Lectures, laboratory exercises, and projects in modern optics. Topics: polarization properties of light, reflection and refraction, coherence and interference, Fraunhofer and Fresnel diffraction, imaging and transforming properties of lenses, spatial filtering, coherent optical processors, holography, optical properties of materials, lasers, nonlinear optics, electro-optic and acousto-optic materials and devices, optical detectors, fiber optics, and optical communication. Students may use this subject to find an advanced undergraduate project and/or to satisfy Phase II of the writing requirement.

Lectures, laboratory exercises, and projects in modern optics. Topics: polarization properties of light, reflection and refraction, coherence and interference, Fraunhofer and Fresnel diffraction, imaging and transforming properties of lenses, spatial filtering, coherent optical processors, holography, optical properties of materials, lasers, nonlinear optics, electro-optic and acousto-optic materials and devices, optical detectors, fiber optics, and optical communication.

The colors of the rainbow are within visible, or white light. An easy way to remember the colors is to remember ROY G. BIV - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. These colors make up the spectrum of visible light.

Learn more about rainbows and light refraction and demonstrate refraction of light.