Optics Articles

Photonics is the study of light and other types of radiant energy whose quantum unit is the photon. The impact of photonics on research, technology, navigation, culture, astronomy, forensics, and...

With a specific gravity of 1.85 g/cm3, beryllium is the lightest metal that is workable. It is 45 percent lighter than aluminum and approximately five times as stiff. Its stiffness to weight ratio...

Photonics Rules of Thumb Scientists and engineers tend to want to answer simple relational questions with a blackboard covered with equations, even when questioners just want a rough estimate to...

Illumination design has developed rapidly to include not only automotive headlamps and street lamps, but also backlit displays, fluorescent panel lighting, light-emitting diode or laser sources, and...

Camera resolution depends upon the optical blur diameter and the detector size. Schade combined these to create an equivalent resolution that is a function of Fλ/d where F is the focal ratio,...

Some efforts in global optimization research for optical design center around probabilistic methods such as global search. While promising for small problems with few variables, these methods...

Simple Meniscus Lens The simple meniscus lens is almost universally used in inexpensive cameras. To get an image of good quality it must be used with a separate aperture stop, reducing the...

To Isaac Newton the problem was clear, and in 1704 he realized the effects of atmospheric turbulence on image formation. Just as heat waves shimmering above a hot patch of ground can distort our...