Optics
Real optics for talented middle schoolers.
Online from anywhere · or in-person in Princeton, NJ
A World Through the Lens of Optics
Optics is one of the four courses of the Physics Lyceum: Middle 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. Light as Rays
The simplest useful picture of light. Light traveling in straight lines until something gets in its way. Shadows and the size of the light source. Why a pinhole camera works. The ray picture as the right tool for everything in this course, set against the wave picture, which is for later.
2. Reflection and Mirrors
The first rule: the angle going in equals the angle going out.Flat mirrors and where their images form. Curved mirrors: concave mirrors that focus light to a point, and convex mirrors that spread it out. Drawing rays on paper to find any mirror image before you check it with a real mirror.
3. Refraction and Snell’s Law
Why a straw looks broken in a glass of water. Light bending as it crosses from air into water or glass, and the rule that describes the bend: Snell’s law. Total internal reflection: why light can be trapped inside a glass fiber and used to carry signals around the world.
4. Lenses and Image Formation
How a piece of curved glass can make a picture. Converging lenses that bring light to a focus, and diverging lenses that spread it out. The thin-lens formula. Ray tracing: a clean recipe for finding any image, real or virtual, magnified or shrunk, upright or upside down, before you look through the lens.
5. Color and Dispersion
Why a prism makes a rainbow. White light as a mixture of all colors. Dispersion: different colors bend by different amounts in glass or water. Why a rainbow always appears in the same order, and why you cannot find one without rain. Why the sky is blue and a sunset is red, in outline.
6. The Eye and Optical Instruments
How the rules of optics put a tiny picture on the back of your eye. The eye as a small optical system: cornea, lens, and retina. Nearsighted and farsighted vision and what glasses do about them. A magnifying glass, a simple camera, and a basic telescope, each as a few lenses arranged in the right order.
The specific topics, and the depth given to each, may shift depending on the dynamics of the cohort. The destination, a working understanding of optics from rays through image formation and the eye, stays the same.