Over 4,700 mineral species descriptions include HTML-linked mineral tables by physical and optical properties of all known valid mineral species.

Try these great optical illusions yourself, and read the explanation of how your brain fools your eyes. You will need Shockwave to run these properly.

Find out about the physics behind those fun-house mirrors. Students manipulate a virtual optics bench to explore the images formed by mirrors and lenses.

Discussion of two types of stereoisomers: geometrical and optical isomers.

How do animators make still images come to life? Are the images really moving, or are they merely an optical illusion? TED-Ed takes you behind the scenes to reveal the secret of motion in movies. [5:12]

Explains the different types of optical character recognition technology available for the blind and visually impaired.

Biography of Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), a famous Swiss mathematician also known for his work in optics and astronomy who left behind him a huge body of academic works.

Read a passage about using optical traps to manipulate single DNA strands and answer the follow-up questions.

A study guide for concepts related to wave optics.

Several short descriptions of demonstrations which illustrate principles of geometric optics (many of which focus upon refraction).

A webpage on optical illusions, containing a grid of black squares, an elephant with four or five legs, and a picture with three faces in it.

Check out the variety of optical illusions provided at this site. Fool your eyes with "Chair or Block," "Angles or E," "Old or Young Woman," "Face or Vase," and others.

This site provides a short explanation of light, how it travels, and the speed in which it travels. Many other concepts related to optics can be found on this site as well.

Describes the different types of optical illusions and their characteristics.

Discusses how optical illusions are actually caused by how our eyes and brains work.

An interesting discussion of optical illusions, their benefits for children, the skills incorporated in drawing your own, and some different types.

Discover the philosophers and scientists who studied optical illusions and some of the techniques used to create the illusions.

A collection of information on the science of light and optics. Features a wide variety of resources: key events in history, reference materials, multimedia links, optical illusion activities, glossary of optics terms, and information on...

Rainbows and sunsets are called "atmospheric optics". They can be caused by light being absorbed, reflected, scattered, refracted, or diffracted by particles in the atmosphere. Learn all about different atmospheric optics along with...

A tutorial page explaining how the speed of light is dependent upon the optical density of the material through which it moves. Optical density is related to the index of refraction; sample values are given.

Site studies light refraction and provides illustrations several illustration. Contains links to Snell's Law, lenses, ray optics, light and much more.

A simple experiment that demonstrates the concept of total internal reflection, and shows how light can travel around curves and corners, as it does in fiber-optic cables. Accompanied by an explanation of what's happening.

This resource provides a basic definition of fiber optics including a drawing, and it also tells some advantages of using fiber optic cables instead of metal.

This resource contains some optical illusions that will boggle your mind as you try to figure them out.