[Free Registration/Login Required] Interactive explores the concept of optical illusion.

This timeline compiles an enormous amount of historical information from the field of optics. From 300 BCE to the present, strategic experiments, findings, and theories are described.

Article explaining what lenses are and how they work. At the end of the article, there are links to several hands-on activities for investigating lenses.

This project investigates the phenomenon of apparent motion by making your own flip-book animations. This optical illusion experiment, while fun and short, will prove to be a very eye opening experience.

A 36-page booklet of activities and experiments for exploring the properties of and nature of light. Includes a section on careers in optics. As this is a Girl Scouts booklet, it was created with girls in mind, but would be equally...

Download this Educators Guide to light, color, and their uses. Choose from different activities using lenses, prisms, hidden messages, periscopes, and kaleidoscopes

In this lesson, students discuss and explore perception and illusions. Websites are provided showing various optical illusions. Students are asked to journal about illusions, recreate illusions, and create their own flip-book.

A very comprehensive unit including topics such as light and its source, visible sources of light, transparency of objects and much more. Also offers a resource list, blackline masters, and expectation list, expectation summary and a...

View Earth's aerosol optical depth by watching a global map evolve from January 2005 to November 2008. Learn about aerosol amounts such as volcanic ash, sea salt, smoke, and other pollutants.

Use this resource to find out the origin of the optic nerve and some of the strange effects a damaged optic nerve can produce. There is a diagram for further understanding.

Discusses Rayleigh scattering in plain language and attributes the blueness of the skies to this phenomenon. Discussion of scattering is just one topic of many on this lengthy page of optical topics.

Artcyclopedia provides an explanation of the movement of optical art along with a listing of links to the artists known for this kind of art.

This site explores the microscope in great detail. Content includes a focus on the microscope's basic functions (including a general diagram), the history of the microscope, each feature of the microscope, differing objectives,...

Students will investigate the properties of light waves. They will learn about the different types of electromagnetic waves and mechanical waves, and investigate the phenomena of reflection, refraction, interference, and diffraction.

A collection of simple experiments for exploring the basic properties of light and color.

A collection of intermediate experiments, for students aged ten and up, for exploring the magnification, reflection, and refraction of light.

This Science, Optics, and You site offers a biography of Roger Bacon with focus on his treatises on optics.

Biography of Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788-1827), a French physicist best known for his pioneering work in optics.

This experiment demonstrates the concept of total internal reflection, using basic materials. Accompanied by a detailed explanation of what's happening, and links to articles on reflection and refraction.

Site provides a diagram as well as a scientific explanation of light reflection. Includes links to ray optics, light and physics.

A collection of tutorials and interactive resources, from basic to advanced, that explain concepts related to the science of light.

Why can't our extremely complex eyes render simple optical illusions? Surprise, surprise- it comes back to the brain, which has only evolved to encounter natural stimuli. Mark Changizi explains how the brain reckons with optical...

Interactive lab that deals with various physics topics: classical mechanics, optics, and thermodynamics.

Learn about the diffraction of light using the wave model and Huygen's principle.