Through illustrated diagrams and animations, students explore the broken pencil phenomenon and light refraction.

This page is a continuation of a tutorial about light reflection and refraction. It contains a diagram and suggestions on how to derive Snell's Law, which governs the refraction of light in a medium. For background to this derivation,...

Illustrated diagrams in this tutorial help students understand the properties and functions of lenses.

Light travels as waves. Waves can be described by their amplitude, wavelength and frequency. The speed of a wave can be calculated from its frequency and wavelength.

Students discover how mirrors affect optics in this module through reading informational text, watching animations, and answering self-checking practice questions.

In this activity, students construct their own pinhole camera to observe the behavior of light.

This physics department site features an indexing page for a variety of pages pertaining to atmospheric optics. Topics include rainbows, halos, auroras, mirages, star twinkling, sunsets, green flashes, coronas, and more. Excellent...

A discussion of how to make a magnifying lens exhibit using a water-filled flask and a light bulb. Consists of assembly instructions and a "To do and notice" section. Great for a teacher demonstration or a student project.

In this activity students will create images of images of images that can repeat forever. Students will recreate this effect by setting up two acrylic plastic mirrors.