Related papers: Optics undergraduate experiments using smart (and …
Smartphone-integrated physics laboratories (SmartIPLs) have emerged as a cost-effective and scalable approach that offers new opportunities for enhancing introductory physics education. By leveraging the sensing, imaging, and computing…
Although the observation of optical spectra is common practice in physics classes, students are usually limited to a passive, qualitative observation of nice colours. This article discusses a diffraction-based spectrometer that allows…
Optomechanics, the study of the mechanical interaction of light with matter, has proven to be a fruitful area of research that has yielded many notable achievements, including the direct detection of gravitational waves in kilometer-scale…
Understanding the momentum of light when propagating through optical media is not only fundamental for studies as varied as classical electrodynamics and polaritonics in condensed matter physics, but also for important applications such as…
Described is an experiment in which a smartphone was caused to move at steady state in a vertical plane, on a path that was nearly circular. During a time interval of data acquisition that encompassed multiple orbits, the acceleration of…
Experimental activities are an essential part of physics education. In addition to conveying scientific knowledge, they play a significant role in developing scientific literacy, inquiry skills, and critical thinking. In today's world,…
This thesis is mainly devoted to the study of the quantum properties of optical parametric oscillators (OPOs), which are nowadays the sources of the highest-quality quantum-correlated light, apart from fundamental tools in the…
Advances in micro-technology of the last years have made it possible to carry optics textbooks experiments over to atomic and molecular beams, such as diffraction by a double slit or transmission grating. The usual wave-optical approach…
A low cost fluorescence-based optical system is developed for detecting the presence of certain microorganisms and molecules within a diluted sample. A specifically designed device setup compatible with conventional 96 well plates is chosen…
Ellipsometry is a powerful and well-established optical technique used in the characterisation of materials. It works by combining the components of elliptically polarized light in order to draw information about the optical system. We…
We describe four classical undergraduate physics experiments that were done with everyday objects and low-cost sensors: mechanical oscillations, transmittance of light through a slab of matter, beam deformation under load, and thermal…
In undergraduate optics courses, diffraction gratings are studied extensively, generally within the scalar approximation. When the vector nature of light is taken into account, so-called polarization diffraction gratings have been proposed,…
We describe a simple experimental apparatus which allows one to observe the wave properties of light in a new way. This apparatus also makes possible to introduce and illustrate, in a very suggestive way, some fundamental principles of…
Free electrons moving in an optical standing wave field feel the ponderomotive potential, acting as a refractive-index medium in electron optics. Emerging technologies involving this potential have been proposed and realized in electron…
A small tabletop experiment for a direct measurement of the speed of light to an accuracy of few percent is described. The experiment is accessible to a wide spectrum of undergraduate students, in particular to students not majoring in…
The study of light lensed by cosmic matter has yielded much information about astrophysical questions. Observations are explained using geometrical optics following a ray-based description of light. After deflection the lensed light…
Light has a fascinating property: it always travels the path that takes the least time between any two points. This is the motivating property behind optical phenomena such as Reflection and Refraction. The unreasonable economic efficiency…
Geometric optical distortion is a significant contributor to the astrometric error budget in large telescopes using adaptive optics. To increase astrometric precision, optical distortion calibration is necessary. We investigate using…
We present a home-lab experimental activity, successfully proposed to our students during covid19 pandemic, based on \textit{state-of-the-art} technologies to teach error analysis and uncertainties to science and engineering students. In…
This Resource Letter provides a guide to the literature on teaching experimental physics using sensors in tablets, smartphones, and some specialized devices. After a general discussion of the hardware (sensors) and the software (apps), we…