Geometric Optics
Real geometric optics for talented high schoolers.
Online from anywhere · or in-person in Princeton, NJ
A World Through the Lens of Geometric Optics
Geometric Optics is one of the six classical core courses of the Physics Lyceum: High School curriculum, taught on the Deep Physics model that runs through the whole SoTS Physics Lyceum.
The course runs on theory, problem-solving sessions, homework, and practical laboratory work. The Lyceum provides the equipment, and tuition covers it.
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. Real and virtual images. Combined lens systems.
4. Optical Instruments
What lenses combine to do. The human eye and accommodation, the near point, the far point, and common refractive defects. The simple magnifier. The compound microscope: magnification and numerical aperture. The astronomical telescope: refractor versus reflector, and the design choice behind each. The camera: aperture, depth of field, exposure.
5. Aberrations and Lens Design
Where the ideal lens equation stops being enough. Chromatic aberration, spherical aberration, coma, astigmatism, and distortion. Achromatic doublets and the philosophy of modern lens design. Diffraction-limited resolution as the point where the ray picture finally runs out.
6. Photometry, Color, and Where Geometric Optics Ends
How much light, what colour, and the modern instruments that sit at the boundary between geometric optics and what lies past it. Photometric quantities: luminous flux, intensity, illuminance, luminance, and the candela. Color science: trichromacy, RGB, the CIE chromaticity diagram. Fiber optics in depth, with numerical aperture and propagation modes. Then a short survey of three modern instruments whose full theory lives past geometric optics: the laser, and holography as a reconstruction of wavefronts. Adaptive optics, which corrects atmospheric distortion and stays squarely inside geometric optics.
The specific topics, and the depth given to each, may shift depending on class priorities and the dynamics of the cohort.
Schedule, Tuition, and Enrollment
calibrate: line up the H markstune