What is 'geometrical resonance' in optics?
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The only sort of optical resonance that results in increasing light intensity in what occurs inside lasers. Here, electrons which have been excited to higher metastable states in special materials are knocked down to lower energy levels by a photon, and in the process release an identicle photon to the first. Photons travelling back and forth between mirrors on either side of the matereal build up in resonance (one mirror is only about 99% reflective, allowing 1% of the light to be emitted, this is the laser beam). This is called stimulated emission and is what causes lasers to produce a very straight, monochromatic and in phase light beam.\n\nGeometrical resonance could be loosely interpreted to mean when interference patterns occur due to specific geometrical  patterns in and between mediums. A very thin film, such an oil slick in on top of a flat surface, which reflect light from its top and bottom surfaces which are only separated by a distance of about half a wavelength of visible light. This causes some wavelengths to be reflected in phase and some out of phase, causing constructive and destructive interference respectively. This is why you see different colours depending on the thickness of the oil slick.\n\nTwo optically flat (extreemly flat) pieces of glass placed on top of each other with a very thin spacer at one end, causing a thin air wedge between, will result in a pattern of light and dark bands if using monochromatic light, or a complex pattern of colours if using white light, as a result of the different interferences between different wavelengths as the distance between the plates of glass vary at different points of the wedge.
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Angle at which light is totally reflected. \n\nThis website has a good diagram.\n\nhttp://www.physicsclassroom.com/Class/refrn/U14L3c.html
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Refracted light rays bend toward the normal when the material being entered has a higher index of refraction then the material you are coming from.  Reflected light behaves according to total internal reflection, and bounces off the surface at the same angle that it approached at, much like skipping a stone off a lake's surface.  Check out snell's law on wikipedia for more.
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Hmmm.  Reading “Tulips” by Padraic Colum?  Anyway…\n\nBoth are optical instruments of the late 17th Century.  Newton used a prism to break sunlight up into its contituent colors—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and infinitely fine gradations in between.  Spinoza, although nowadays more famous for his philosophy, actually made a living grinding lenses for telescopes and such.  Both tools bend and distort light, and both have (relatively) simple mathematical descriptions.\n\nIf indeed, the aforementioned poem is what called to mind the question, I think the reference has to do with the abstract mathematics of prisms and lenses translating into real-world manipulation of light.\n\n\nRyan Wyatt\nRose Center for Earth & Space\nNew York, New York
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The incident ray is perpendicular to the surface of reflection.\nThen one has the least distance case.
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Chromatic aberration is color smearing.  It is much more likely to occur in a lens than a mirror, since the amount of refraction in the lens depends on color, which is how a prism rainbow works.\n\nSpherical aberration is blurring caused by the mirror having a spherical shape.  A parabolic mirror won't have this.
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In physics, resonance is the tendency of a system to absorb more energy when the frequency of the oscillations matches the system's natural frequency of vibration (its resonant frequency) than it does at other frequencies. Examples are the acoustic resonances of musical instruments, the tidal resonance of the Bay of Fundy, orbital resonance as exemplified by some moons of the solar system's gas giants, the resonance of the basilar membrane in the biological transduction of auditory input, and resonance in electronic circuits.\n\nA resonant object, whether mechanical, acoustic, or electrical, will probably have more than one resonant frequency (especially harmonics of the strongest resonance). It will be easy to vibrate at those frequencies, and more difficult to vibrate at other frequencies. It will "pick out" its resonant frequency from a complex excitation, such as an impulse or a wideband noise excitation. In effect, it is filtering out all frequencies other than its resonance.
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Rayleigh scattering (named after Lord Rayleigh) is the scattering of light by particles much smaller than the wavelength of the light. It occurs when light travels in transparent solids and liquids, but is most prominently seen in gases. Rayleigh scattering of sunlight from particles in the atmosphere is one reason light from the sky is blue.
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It's probably the water causing refraction of the scope.  You'll see that at higher magnifications.  I think it's the same principle as a snowflake.
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A conver mirror is diverging in nature.Ligh rays incident at its extreme corners gets diverged following laws of reflection.Hence if we draw the diagram we can clearly understand that the reflected rays follow a wider path.While in case of a plane mirror the divergence is not so large.The credit to this can be given to the cuvature in convex mirror
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i'm assuming these are a convex and concave lenses ....hence the different dispersions ....forming a doublet will cause parallel light up to 2000 yards or optical infinity
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Mostly used in science, you familiar with it displaying the rainbow with white light, it can also be used to indentify other colors of light a gases.  When using it to identify gases, you will see the rainbow, but with a line of color missing called the "absorption lines" scientists have developed a chart to referece this.  For example, Cholorine will show all the colors but a line a blue/purple will be misssing, they can reference their documents and know what gas it is.  Here is a picture I found about it,\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cumulative-absorption-spectrum-hubble-telescope.jpg\n\nMany people suppose that the main optical action of a prism is to disperse white light into its component parts, because that's what Isaac Newton used prisms for. But because dispersion is really a very small effect, it isn't the main optical action of a prism; more correctly, it should be looked at a a minor side effect. \n\nThe main effect of a prism is to deviate a beam of light. But, because of the dispersion in the refractivity of transparent materials, the deviation is slightly different for light of different colors. This slight difference in the deviation — only one or two percent, typically — is where the dispersive power of a prism comes from. \n\nIn optics, prisms made for the purpose of dispersing light are usually made with bases that are equilateral triangles, so that the angles between adjacent sides of the prism are 60°. However, prisms are also often used to re-direct light by using internal reflection; these often have bases that are isosceles right triangles, with angles of 45°-90°-45°. As optical technology developed, opticians found uses for more complicated pieces of glass with plane entrance, exit, and reflecting or refracting faces; but these are often not “prisms” in the geometric sense, but more complicated polyhedra, or even more complex shapes, with unused corners cut or rounded off to reduce weight.
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the Michelson-Morley experiment\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley_experiment
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called form of distortion is 'geometric distortion', which arises when a three-dimensional object is projected on a flat plane. For instance, a sphere in the image center is rendered as a round disk on the film, while a sphere in the image periphery of a lens with a large angle of view is elliptically elongated. \n\nExample: An Unnatural bowing of straight lines or other distortion of shapes, especially at the sides and corners in a TV picture.
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Hi. You could start here : http://www.mellesgriot.com/products/optics/oc_3.htm\nMay not be the best for everyone.
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If the deflection surface has any diffraction or diffusion to it, the light may just be redirected imperfectly. 12kV? Jumpin Gigawatts!
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That's just a characteristic of concave mirrors.  Check this site out.  It shows you how it happens.\n\nhttp://www.physicsclassroom.com/Class/refln/U13L3a.html