Oh, wow, oh, oh, wow, oh, wow, oh, man.

Oh, my life.

And so, you're listening to the Science of Everything podcast, episode 52, applications of optics.

And I'm your host, James Fodor.

This episode, we continue on from the discussion of light and optics way back in episode 32,

so very strongly recommend you listen to that first.

And in this episode, we'll look at mirrors and lenses and how they work,

and then apply that knowledge to examining how

optical instruments like simple cameras, telescopes and microscopes work, and how they

magnify images. And we'll also talk about a few other interesting optical phenomena,

including mirages, rainbows and thin film interference. So we've got a lot to talk

about, so let's jump straight into it.

Okay, so let's start with the discussion of mirrors and lenses, and before we get into the details of that,

there's an important concept that we need to know about, which is that of the ray diagram.

So the ray model of light is a simplified model of the behavior of light that is useful when we're

talking about the production of images through lenses and mirrors and so forth.

The ray model of light abstracts away from all the details of photons and the wave behavior

of light and quantum mechanical properties and so forth.

So it's not especially realistic in that sense, but it's very useful for when we have a large amount of light in sort of more usual everyday settings, particularly, you know, in cameras and so forth.

And also where we have relatively long distances that we're concerned with, you know, much longer than the length of a photon or a proton or something like that.

So the basic rule of how ray diagrams work is that when

a light of ray, when a ray of light hits a smooth surface, the angle of incidence is always

...