Monday, May 18

• Waves and Sound Test
• Read Chapters 27–29

Tuesday, May 19

• Intro. to light
  • History of vision - early philosophers thought that eyes sent out "streamers" that detected objects. Later people argued that it's a wave (diffraction, reflection and refraction like water waves) and a particle (it moves in straight line motion when collimated).
• Vision
  • Structure of the eye - cornea, retina, pupil. Colorblindness.
  • We observe relative brightness with our rods; color with cones. we have three cones - red, blue and green. Red, Blue and Green are the three primaries. Yellow is definitely NOT a primary color!
• Demonstrations - color mixing with lights and with transparencies.

Wednesday, May 20

• Vision
  • we see 24 frames per second - movie projectors were 24 fps; modern video is 30 fps
  • Our brain puts together the intermediate pictures
  • Range of frequencies is Below this range is IR; above is UV
• Dual wave nature of light - 1905 Einstein's photoelectric effect theory - massless particles of light with distinct energy. These are called photons and are little packets of energy. Think about E=mc² too.
• Speed of light - universal "speed limit" 3.0 x 10⁸ m/s
• Roemer's measurement of Io's orbital period in 1675 (about 42.5 hours)
  • Earth orbital radius is 150,000,000 km
  • Time for light to cross Earth's orbit is 16 min. 40 sec. (Roemer measured it as 22 minutes)
  • Calculate the speed of light
• Leon Focualt in 1862 used Wheatstone's rotating mirror to measure the speed of sound to 2.98e8 m/s
  • Michelson's optimized the octagonal mirror experiment up until about 1880
• Light year - Distance light travels in one year (9.5 x 10¹² km = 6 trillion miles). The sun is 8 light minutes away; Alpha Centauri (our nearest star) is 4 light years away. Calculate the distance to Alpha Centauri.
• 1.5 seconds from the moon

Thursday, May 21

• Depth perception – we judge depth by
  • Comparing relative sizes of objects to what we remember. If a person looks small they must be far away, etc.
  • Focus muscle memory. Muscles change the shape of your cornea to focus on near and faraway objects. Your brain remembers how much the muscle has to contract to focus at different distances.
  • Stereovision (binocular vision). Our two eyes see different images from different perspectives. Our brain compares these images to see depth. We can also judge distance to close objects because our eyes cross slightly to view nearby objects.
• 3D images with anaglyph glasses
• 3D with polarized light

Friday, May 22

• P. 439, 8–15 due
• Transparency and opacity
  • Objects that are transparent allow light to pass through completely (glass)
    • The color that comes through is what is transmitted. All other colors blocked.
  • Objects that allow light to pass through but scatter the light are translucent (frosted glass)
  • Objects that block light are opaque
• Polarization
  • Demonstrate polariods and polarization example pictures
  • 3D movies where polarization is used.
  • Polarizer analyzer
• Optical illusions - Einstein's face and transparencies

Monday, May 25 – No school – Memorial Day

Tuesday, May 26

• Light Concept Development due
• Law of reflection, plane and parabolic mirrors
  • Car headlight parabolic mirrors
  • Concave and convex mirrors
• DVD demos

Wednesday, May 27

• Reflectivity Lab

Thursday, May 28

• Demo: Beaker full of oil
• 3-D vision with polarized light.
• Why is the sky blue?
• Why are sunsets red?
• Total internal reflection with laser and light tubes
• Test Q&A
• More DVD Demos

Friday, May 29

• Light Intensity Lab due
• Final Exam Part I

Monday, June 1

• Final Exam Part II

Tuesday, June 2

• Reflectivity Lab Due

Wednesday, June 3

• World's simplest motor lab
• Hand in textbooks

Thursday, June 4 – No school – Teacher Record Day and Graduation

Friday, June 5

• World's simpest motor lab (continued)