• Optics is the science that deals with the origin, movement , detection of light.

• High-Tech Optics:
Optical fiber ( communication )
X-rays
Laser scanner
Lasers in your printer and CD player

• Everyday Optics:
1.What makes the rainbow?:
Because light is refracted
Refraction of light : Speed of light is changed in the medium, the speed difference causes the
change of direction.
The speed of light is slower in water or glass than in air.

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Rainbow making process

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2.Why sky is blue and the sunset red?:
The reason why the sky looks blue during the day is the scattering effect of light.
Visible rays which pass through the atmosphere are scattered by nitrogen, oxygen molecules
in the atmosphere. “Scattering” refers to the phenomenon that small particles in the
atmosphere absorb light and release it in all directions.
The degree of scattering depends on the wavelength of the light.

When sunlight enters the earth and spreads to the atmosphere, blue light rays with short
wavelengths collide with air particles and spread all over the place and can not go far.
On the other hand, the red light rays have a low ratio of colliding with air particles, so they
can travel far into the air.

In the daytime, the sky is blue because the thickness of the earth’s atmosphere, which the
light from the sun has to pass through to reach the earth, is relatively short compared to the
evening. But in the evening, the altitude of the sun is lowered. When the altitude of the sun

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is lowered, the slope of the sunlight becomes smaller, and the atmosphere layer to pass
through becomes longer. Therefore, blue light with a short wavelength and small angle of
scattering can not pass through the atmosphere, and only red light with a long wavelength
and scattering angle passes through the atmosphere layer, so the sunset appears red.

3.Why do you see floating mirages over a warm highway?: ( like water on the loads )
While driving on a hot, sunny day, you may have been surprised to see a puddle of water a
few hundred meters ahead on the road. However, after covering that distance and reaching
the spot where the puddle was, the water is nowhere to be seen. In fact, it has moved a
few hundred meters further ahead on the road. Once again, you reach that spot, but find no
trace of water. How is it that an entire stretch of road can look drenched in water, and then be
bone-dry by the time you reach it?

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Why do we sometimes see fake water on roads on a hot day?
• Short answer: The fake puddles of water that we see on the road on a sunny day is due to
an optical phenomenon called a mirage, which is caused by the refraction (or bending) of
light rays due to differing temperatures of the air above the road.

Although light travels at 300,000,000 meters per second in a vacuum, it slows down a bit
when it goes from a thinner medium (air) to a denser medium (glass, water).
Light rays bend when they enter a dense medium (i.e., where light rays slow down slightly).
This phenomenon is called the refraction of light.

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• This apparent slowdown occurs when photons (microscopic particles that make up ‘light’)
interact with the particles of the medium they are traveling through. As a result, they are
absorbed and emitted over and over again, which lowers the average velocity of light by a
small fraction in a given medium.

The ratio by which light is slowed down in a specific medium is called the refractive index
of that medium. It is a dimensionless quantity and its value is usually greater than 1
(although it can be less than 1 too).

How is the refraction of light related to ‘fake water’ on roads?

A medium’s refractive index partly depends on its temperature. Typically, the higher the
temperature of the medium, the less dense it becomes, and vice versa.

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• On a hot sunny day, the sun heats up the road a lot, just like everything else! However,
since roads are generally black, they absorb a lot of heat and become even hotter than
light-colored objects. This raises the temperature of the air just above the surface of the
road. What you have there is a pocket of warm air below layers of ‘relatively’ cooler air.
This creates a non-uniform medium, as the air just above the road becomes slightly less
dense than the rest of the air.

Now, light rays from the sun travel through the air in a straight line, but when they reach the
relatively warmer (and less dense) layer just above the road, their speed increases
slightly and they change their path, getting refracted to reach the observer’s, i.e., your eyes.

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• Thus, the water that you see on the road is not really water, but a reflected image of the sky.
Mirages are commonly observed on sunny days when the sweltering heat from the sun
warms up flat surfaces (like roads) and thus the air above those sweltering stretches of
asphalt.

• Mirages can be pretty cruel, especially for thirsty travelers who are desperately looking for
water in a sprawling desert. The optical illusion makes it seem as though there’s a water
body nearby, because the water body (or at least an image) that appears due to a mirage is
so perfect that you can’t really tell it apart from a real body of water. Parched travelers
quickly head in that direction in the hopes of finding water, only to reach the point, find
that there’s no water, just another mirage a few miles further along – a cruel trick of light,
heat and optics!

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4. What causes the colors in soap bubbles and oil slicks?:
Light is reflected from both the inner and outer surface of the soap bubble.

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• The light rays that are reflected off the inner surface of the bubble travel further than the
light rays that are reflected off the outer surface. Some wavelengths will interfere
destructively and others constructively, depending on the extra distance traveled by a
transmitted-and-reflected ray. Whether the reflected rays are in or out of phase with each
other depends on the extra distance (through the film and back) that the second ray must
travel before rejoining the first ray. This distance depends on the angle of the incident light
and the thickness of the film.

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• White light is made up of different colors, corresponding to specific wavelengths. As the
film thickness changes, the extra distance the ray must travel changes. Interference is
constructive when the total extra distance matches a specific wavelength of light, and is
destructive when it is half a wavelength. So if white light shines on a bubble, the film
reflects light of a specific hue, and this hue changes with the film’s thickness.
• The iridescence of a soap bubble, which seems to contain a wealth of changing color,
stems from light striking the bubble from varied angles. The path length varies with the
angle of incident light, giving varying path differences for the internally and externally
reflected rays at different points on the bubble. This means that, even if the soap film is of
uniform thickness, different colors can be seen.

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Young’s Double Slit Experiment :
wave properties of the light
(diffraction)

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