Deep Physics: Geometric Optics and Atomic Structure for Talented High Schoolers, Princeton
Real geometric optics, taught from rays and lenses through atomic spectra and the photoelectric effect. The bridge from classical to quantum physics. For talented high schoolers.
A World Through the Lens of Geometric Optics and Atomic Structure
Light is the everyday signal we read the world by. Atoms are what most of the world is made of. This course teaches the geometry of light, and finishes at the experiments that first told us atoms could not be described by classical physics at all.
A pencil in a glass of water looks broken at the surface. The pencil is straight. The light is what bends.
A magnifying glass held in sunlight focuses to a point hot enough to burn paper. Move the same glass back from a window, and an upside-down image of the window appears on a wall.
Heat hydrogen gas in a tube. It glows. Pass that light through a prism. You see a few bright lines, not a continuous spectrum. Atoms emit at specific colors and no others.
Shine blue light on a polished metal. Electrons fly off. Shine red light, however bright, and nothing happens. Light arrives in discrete packets, not continuous waves.
For everyday optics, light behaves as rays, and the geometry alone predicts how lenses and mirrors form images. For atoms, classical physics fails. The discrete spectra and the photoelectric effect both need an idea that the ray picture cannot give: light comes in quanta, and atoms hold only specific energies. The course teaches both: the geometry of light where it works, and the experimental cracks where a new theory begins.
This course teaches you what physicists actually know about it. From first principles.
You will:
- Trace any ray through a system of lenses and mirrors and predict the image it forms.
- Use Snell’s law to predict refraction at any boundary, and find the critical angle for total internal reflection.
- Use the hydrogen spectrum and the Bohr model to compute the wavelengths emitted by an excited atom.
- Apply the photon model to predict the kinetic energy of an electron knocked off a metal by light of any wavelength.
By the end, you will think about light, lenses, and atomic spectra the way a physicist thinks about them.
What You Will Actually Understand
By the end of the course, you will understand six core ideas of geometric optics and atomic structure.
1. Reflection and Mirrors
How light bounces, and how mirrors form images. The law of reflection. Image formation by plane mirrors. Spherical mirrors, concave and convex. Focal length, the mirror equation, magnification. Ray tracing as the universal tool.
2. Refraction and Snell’s Law
How light bends at a boundary, and what the bending lets us build. Index of refraction. Snell’s law. Total internal reflection and the critical angle. Optical fibers, prism dispersion, and the geometry behind a rainbow.
3. Lenses and Image Formation
From a single lens to the equation that governs them all. Thin lenses, converging and diverging. The thin-lens equation. Image construction by ray tracing. Sign conventions worked through carefully. Real and virtual images.
4. Optical Instruments
What lenses combine to do. The human eye and accommodation. The simple magnifier. The compound microscope. The astronomical telescope. Angular magnification and the design choice behind each instrument.
5. Atomic Spectra and the Bohr Model
Where classical physics first breaks. The discrete emission and absorption spectra of atoms. Hydrogen and the Balmer series. The Bohr model: quantized orbits and quantized energies. The hydrogen spectrum predicted from a single new postulate.
6. Light as Quanta: the Photoelectric Effect
The experiment that forced light to be a particle, too. Blackbody radiation as the puzzle that started it. The photoelectric effect: threshold frequency, stopping voltage, and Einstein’s photon explanation. The energy of a photon. The bridge from classical optics to quantum physics.
The specific topics, and the depth given to each, may shift depending on class priorities and the dynamics of the cohort. The destination, a working understanding of geometric optics and the experimental foundations of atomic physics, stays the same.
Schedule, Pricing & Enrollment
Formats: Fall, Spring, and Summer semesters.
Schedule, format, tuition, refund policy, and transcripts apply to every Lyceum course. They live on the Physics Lyceum: High School overview.
To enroll, schedule a call. We confirm fit, prerequisites, and the right semester.
Part of the SoTS Physics Lyceum
Geometric Optics and Atomic Structure is one of eight semester-long physics courses in the SoTS Physics Lyceum: a multi-year curriculum in Princeton, NJ.
Mechanics of motion. Mechanics of bodies and fluids. Waves and oscillations. Thermodynamics. Electricity and magnetism. Optics and atomic structure. Special Relativity. Quantum mechanics.
The Lyceum is built on the Deep Physics methodology.