Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
An optical instrument is a device that processes light waves (or photons), either to enhance an image for viewing or to analyze and determine their characteristic properties. Common examples include periscopes , microscopes , telescopes , and cameras .
The most famous compound optical instruments in science are the microscope and the telescope which were both invented by the Dutch in the late 16th century. [110] Microscopes were first developed with just two lenses: an objective lens and an eyepiece. The objective lens is essentially a magnifying glass and was designed with a very small focal ...
Optoelectronic devices are electrical-to-optical or optical-to-electrical transducers, or instruments that use such devices in their operation. [ 1 ] Electro-optics is often erroneously used as a synonym, but is a wider branch of physics that concerns all interactions between light and electric fields , regardless of whether they form part of ...
The principal ray or chief ray (sometimes known as the b ray) in an optical system is the meridional ray that starts at an edge of an object and passes through the center of the aperture stop. [5] [8] [7] The distance between the chief ray (or an extension of it for a virtual image) and the optical axis at an image location defines the size of ...
A polarimeter [1] is a scientific instrument used to measure optical rotation: the angle of rotation caused by passing linearly polarized light through an optically active substance. [ 2 ] Some chemical substances are optically active, and linearly polarized (uni-directional) light will rotate either to the left (counter-clockwise) or right ...
In general, any particular instrument will operate over a small portion of this total range because of the different techniques used to measure different portions of the spectrum. Below optical frequencies (that is, at microwave and radio frequencies), the spectrum analyzer is a closely related electronic device. Spectrometers are used in many ...
The main mechanism for sorting is the arrangement of the optical lattice points. As the cell flow through the optical lattice, there are forces due to the particles drag force that is competing directly with the optical gradient force (See Physics of optical tweezers) from the optical lattice point. By shifting the arrangement of the optical ...
Military instruments as a class draw on most of the categories of instrument described throughout this article, such as navigation, astronomy, optics, and imaging, and the kinetics of moving objects. Common abstract themes that unite military instruments are seeing into the distance, seeing in the dark, knowing an object's geographic location ...