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Prism (optics)
An optical prism is a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that are designed to refract light. At least one surface must be angled — elements with two parallel surfaces are ''not'' prisms. The most familiar type of optical prism is the triangular prism, which has a triangular base and rectangular sides. Not all optical prisms are geometric prisms, and not all geometric prisms would count as an optical prism. Prisms can be made from any material that is transparent to the wavelengths for which they are designed. Typical materials include glass, acrylic and fluorite. A dispersive prism can be used to break white light up into its constituent spectral colors (the colors of the rainbow) as described in the following section. Other types of prisms noted below can be used to reflect light, or to split light into components with different polarizations. Types Dispersive ''Dispersive prisms'' are used to break up light into its constituent spectral ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Triangular Prism (optics)
In optics, a dispersive prism is an optical prism that is used to disperse light, that is, to separate light into its spectral components (the colors of the rainbow). Different wavelengths (colors) of light will be deflected by the prism at different angles. This is a result of the prism material's index of refraction varying with wavelength (dispersion). Generally, longer wavelengths (red) undergo a smaller deviation than shorter wavelengths (blue). The dispersion of white light into colors by a prism led Sir Isaac Newton to conclude that white light consisted of a mixture of different colors. Triangular prisms are the most common type of dispersive prism. Other types of dispersive prism exist that have more than two optical interfaces; some of them combine refraction with total internal reflection. How dispersive prisms work Light changes speed as it moves from one medium to another (for example, from air into the glass of the prism). This speed change causes the l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anti-reflective Coating
An antireflective, antiglare or anti-reflection (AR) coating is a type of optical coating applied to the surface of lenses, other optical elements, and photovoltaic cells to reduce reflection. In typical imaging systems, this improves the efficiency since less light is lost due to reflection. In complex systems such as cameras, binoculars, telescopes, and microscopes the reduction in reflections also improves the contrast of the image by elimination of stray light. This is especially important in planetary astronomy. In other applications, the primary benefit is the elimination of the reflection itself, such as a coating on eyeglass lenses that makes the eyes of the wearer more visible to others, or a coating to reduce the glint from a covert viewer's binoculars or telescopic sight. Many coatings consist of transparent thin film structures with alternating layers of contrasting refractive index. Layer thicknesses are chosen to produce destructive interference in the b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optical Glass
Glass is a non- crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of the molten form; some glasses such as volcanic glass are naturally occurring. The most familiar, and historically the oldest, types of manufactured glass are "silicate glasses" based on the chemical compound silica (silicon dioxide, or quartz), the primary constituent of sand. Soda–lime glass, containing around 70% silica, accounts for around 90% of manufactured glass. The term ''glass'', in popular usage, is often used to refer only to this type of material, although silica-free glasses often have desirable properties for applications in modern communications technology. Some objects, such as drinking glasses and eyeglasses, are so commonly made of silicate-based glass that they are simply called by the name of the material. Despi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Total Internal Reflection
Total internal reflection (TIR) is the optical phenomenon in which waves arriving at the interface (boundary) from one medium to another (e.g., from water to air) are not refracted into the second ("external") medium, but completely reflected back into the first ("internal") medium. It occurs when the second medium has a higher wave speed (i.e., lower refractive index) than the first, and the waves are incident at a sufficiently oblique angle on the interface. For example, the water-to-air surface in a typical fish tank, when viewed obliquely from below, reflects the underwater scene like a mirror with no loss of brightness (Fig.1). TIR occurs not only with electromagnetic waves such as light and microwaves, but also with other types of waves, including sound and water waves. If the waves are capable of forming a narrow beam (Fig.2), the reflection tends to be described in terms of " rays" rather than waves; in a medium whose properties are independent of direction, such ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Single-lens Reflex Camera
A single-lens reflex camera (SLR) is a camera that typically uses a mirror and prism system (hence "reflex" from the mirror's reflection) that permits the photographer to view through the lens and see exactly what will be captured. With twin lens reflex and rangefinder cameras, the viewed image could be significantly different from the final image. When the shutter button is pressed on most SLRs, the mirror flips out of the light path, allowing light to pass through to the light receptor and the image to be captured. History File:Hasselblad 1600F.jpg, Medium format SLR by Hasselblad (Model 1600F), Sweden File:Zenza BRONICA S2 with ZENZANON 100mm F2.8.JPG, Medium format SLR by Bronica (Model S2), Japan. Bronica's later model—the Bronica EC—was the first medium format SLR camera to use an electrically operated focal-plane shutter File:Asahiflex600.jpg, The 1952 ( Pentax) Asahiflex, Japan's first single-lens reflex camera. File:Contaflex BW 2.JPG, The Contaflex III a s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Binoculars
Binoculars or field glasses are two refracting telescopes mounted side-by-side and aligned to point in the same direction, allowing the viewer to use both eyes (binocular vision) when viewing distant objects. Most binoculars are sized to be held using both hands, although sizes vary widely from opera glasses to large pedestal-mounted military models. Unlike a (monocular) telescope, binoculars give users a stereopsis, three-dimensional image: each eyepiece presents a slightly different image to each of the viewer's eyes and the parallax allows the visual cortex to generate an depth perception, impression of depth. Optical designs Galilean Almost from the invention of the telescope in the 17th century the advantages of mounting two of them side by side for binocular vision seems to have been explored. Most early binoculars used Galilean telescope, Galilean optics; that is, they used a convex lens, convex objective (optics), objective and a concave lens, concave eyepiece, eyep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dispersion (optics)
In optics, and by analogy other branches of physics dealing with wave propagation, dispersion is the phenomenon in which the phase velocity of a wave depends on its frequency; sometimes the term chromatic dispersion is used for specificity to optics in particular. A medium having this common property may be termed a dispersive medium (plural ''dispersive media''). Although the term is used in the field of optics to describe light and other electromagnetic waves, dispersion in the same sense can apply to any sort of wave motion such as acoustic dispersion in the case of sound and seismic waves, and in gravity waves (ocean waves). Within optics, dispersion is a property of telecommunication signals along transmission lines (such as microwaves in coaxial cable) or the pulses of light in optical fiber. Physically, dispersion translates in a loss of kinetic energy through absorption. In optics, one important and familiar consequence of dispersion is the change in the angle of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grism
A grism (also called a grating prism) is a combination of a prism and grating arranged so that light at a chosen central wavelength passes straight through. The advantage of this arrangement is that one and the same camera can be used both for imaging (without the grism) and spectroscopy (with the grism) without having to be moved. Grisms are inserted into a camera beam that is already collimated. They then create a dispersed spectrum centered on the object's location in the camera's field of view. The resolution of a grism is proportional to the tangent of the wedge angle of the prism in much the same way as the resolutions of gratings are proportional to the angle between the input and the normal to the grating. The dispersed wavefront sensing system (as part the NIRCam instrument) on the James Webb Space Telescope uses grisms. The system allows coarse optical path length matching between the different mirror segments. See also * Diffraction grating In optics, a di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abbe Prism
In optics, an Abbe prism, named for its inventor, the German physicist Ernst Abbe, is a type of ''constant deviation dispersive prism'' similar to a Pellin–Broca prism. Structure The prism consists of a block of glass forming a right prism with 30°–60°–90° triangular faces. When in use, a beam of light enters face AB, is refracted and undergoes total internal reflection from face BC, and is refracted again on exiting face AC. The prism is designed such that one particular wavelength of the light exits the prism at a deviation angle (relative to the light's original path) of exactly 60°. This is the minimum possible deviation of the prism, all other wavelengths being deviated by greater angles. By rotating the prism (in the plane of the diagram) around any point O on the face AB, the wavelength which is deviated by 60° can be selected. The dispersive Abbe prism should not be confused with the non-dispersive Porro–Abbe or Abbe–Koenig prism An Abbe–Koenig pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pellin–Broca Prism
A Pellin–Broca prism is a type of constant-deviation dispersive prism similar to an Abbe prism. The prism is named for its inventors, the French instrument maker Ph. Pellin and professor of physiological optics André Broca. The prism consists of a four-sided block of glass shaped as a right prism with 90°, 75°, 135°, and 60° angles on the end faces. Light enters the prism through face AB, undergoes total internal reflection from face BC, and exits through face AD. The refraction of the light as it enters and exits the prism is such that one particular wavelength of the light is deviated by exactly 90°. As the prism is rotated around an axis O, the line of intersection of bisector of ∠BAD and the reflecting face BC, the selected wavelength which is deviated by 90° is changed without changing the geometry or relative positions of the input and output beams. The prism is commonly used to separate a single required wavelength from a light beam containing multiple wav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
