Saturday, April 20, 2013

Lens Equation and Diverging Lens

Greetings gang! As we dive into Geometric Optics, I wanted to take a moment and reveal to you that my good friend Mr. Rick Sharpe bested me today. Mr. Sharpe of course is also participating in this project and has a very informative blog that I recommend you view. In our discussion, I was discussing the input and influence of Rene Descarte in optics; he is credited with the development of many of the equations and concepts we study in optics. I noted that Christian monks in Europe around 1000 C.E. were known to use quartz-type crystals to help in reading, thinking this to be the earliest group and time period for using such reading aides. Mr. Sharpe pointed out that magnifying lenses have been found in Viking settlements pre-dating the monks. Also, the Romans were known to have a "burning lense" made of a glass bowl and water used for magnification. I wonder just how far back we can trace the use of glass as a magnification tool.

I did promise to work a sample lens problem for you with a diverging lens. Interestingly, pretty much all lenses today are created from flint and/or crown glass which you should be familiar with from our general study of refraction. Enjoy the video.

http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/lens-equation-diverging-lense/7114673/?s=ACK7eh&ref=app

5 comments:

  1. Great job Strait. Hope to see more posts like this one.

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  2. Great use of physics and the associated mathematics in the glass project.
    Thanks for posting.

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  3. Your post makes me want to go home and experiment with bowl/water magnification. I had no idea the Romans had figured out how to magnify.

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  4. I love using Educreations for some of my demos in class. It's really great for students who are absent! The science is awesome here too!

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  5. Crystal lenses from ancient Egypt in musuems in Cairo and France date to 2500BC. Egyptian carvings from 3300 BC could only have been carved under maginifacation.

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