“ Does a photon have a precise wavelength, or is there an uncertainty associated with it? What happens if a photon approaches an object that has possible excited states that would require almost, but not quite exactly, the amount of energy in the photon? ”

“ In a nonlinear medium, the propagation of one wave can alter the medium in a way that affects the propagation of other waves. I'm pretty sure that violates the superposition principle, and probably the assumptions underlying Fourier analysis as well. Consider sum frequency generation. Two waves with frequencies w1 and w2 interact, and do not produce a wave that is the linear sum of the two waves, but instead produce a wave at frequency w1 + w2. ”

“ In practice, most dispersive media follow this inequality for ranges of wavelengths that are more extensive than just the optical, and so include the adjacent regions of the ultraviolet and infrared, but the relation rarely holds for all wavelengths because, for example, gamma rays penetrate most matter as particles and long enough wavelength radio waves pass through most material with very little attenuation or dispersion. ”

“ Those who are aware that the speed of light slows down in a refractive medium. Third order: Those who realize that what really changes in the medium is not what is usually referred to as "the speed of light" as it appears in relativity and quantum electrodynamics, but it instead refers to a phase velocity which is a classical macroscopic feature of wave mechanics. The changing phase velocity is recovered in the limit where relativity/QM approach classical mechanics. However, IMO, proper treatment of this is far too complicated for our optics article. ”

“ In refraction, I added "The focal length f is considered negative for concave lenses." (Though this wouldn't be true for concave lenses with lower index of refraction than the surrounding medium.) I suggest also adding, "Incoming parallel rays are focused by a convex lens into an inverted real image one focal length from the lens, on the far side of the lens. Rays from an object at finite distance are focused further from the lens than the focal distance; the closer the object is to the lens, the further the image is from the lens. ”

“ As for the induction, the "three points" are just convenient stopping points on your way down the spectrum. There is a one-to-one mapping of the position of the color in the spectrum coming out of the prism and the index of refraction. This can be proved with the mathematics in the article and the picture of the triangular prism (if you believe the picture of the triangular prism) . Since physical measurements of the wavelengths of optical light can be done in other ways, this sets the condition automatically. If you want to replace the paragraph in the article with a better one, be my guest. ”

“ As far as I know, the image may be composed of two sine waves of similar, but not quite identical, frequency added together. Maybe I just don't know what you mean by "spread". There can be media in which lower-frequency waves propagate faster than higher-frequency waves, so is this figure caption asserting something about light (that lower-frequency light travels more slowly? or what?) or is it asserting something that's true of all waves with a mathematical form similar to what's shown? I've changed the wording in the earlier part of the figure caption. ”

“ Quantum optics gets pretty complicated pretty quickly. The simplest ideas are associated with photon counting: but rapidly quantum optics becomes particle physics and we begin to lose sight of the subject of the article. ”

“ The "ray" in geometric optics is an abstraction, or "instrument", that can be used to predict the path of light. - "can be used" or "is used"? is used. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:23, 20 April 2009 (UTC) A light ray is a ray that is perpendicular to the light's wavefronts (and therefore collinear with the wave vector) . - 1) A ray is a ray? Usually we try not to repeat the word itself in the definition, as the definition is supposed to clarify to the uninitiated. 2) I am unsure what "collinear with the wave vector" means. A "light ray" is a "geometrical ray". ”

“ A corner reflector is a set of three mirrors arranged like the corner of a cube, with the reflecting surfaces on the inside, which collectively reflect light back in the direction from which it arrived, for a broad range of orientations of the corner reflector. ”

“ It roughly goes as follows: Zeroeth order: Those completely unaware that the speed of light is special. First order: Those who are aware the speed of light is special, but think it is constant without qualification. ”

“ Paragraph preservation The following paragraphs dropped from the lead during editing. They're quite valuable and belong in the article a bit later on: Some optical phenomena depend on the [ [quantum] ] nature of light relating some areas of optics to [ [quantum mechanics] ] . In practice, the vast majority of optical phenomena can be accounted for using the classical electromagnetic description of light, as described by [ [Maxwell's equations] ] , resorting to phenomenological rules (e.g. Beer's Law, constitutive equations) to describe the interaction of light with matter. ”

“ I think there are cone cells covering all or almost all the retina. There may be rods only in a relatively small area around the edges of the field of vision, but if there are twenty times more rods, I think it must be mostly because over most of the retina, there are more rods per unit area than cones. ”

“ Opticks essentially outlines all the details of geometrical optics but uses corpuscles to explain dispersion in a way that cannot consistently explain diffraction and interference. Of course, it wouldn't be until Fresnel showed the equivalence of ray and wave optics more than 100 years later that people decided that Newton was probably a bit too hasty in his dismissal of Huygens-Hooke. User:ScienceApologist Newtonian optics and emission theory was generally accepted as correct until the early 19th century - Are these two different ideas? ”

“ It is not uncommon there for users to write draft Wikipedia articles. If they are in user space, I have never seen any questioned or proposed for deletion. Wikiversity is for educational materials and "learning by doing." Such draft articles can also be in mainspace, but I have avoided them being at the top level in mainspace, because that could raise neutrality issues. SA clearly, on Wikiversity, could have had totally free rein to edit the article as he saw fit, if it was in user spac. ”

“ User:ScienceApologist Maybe there's some definition of waves meaning some sort of ideal waves for which that's true. For waves in the real world, in general it's not true. For example, for waves in water, when they come near shore and begin to break the effects are nonlinear: higher-amplitude waves will break sooner. In the middle of the ocean, conceivably higher waves might be subject to more wind, because they stick up further, leading to nonlinear effects. For sound waves, larger amplitudes might lead to opening of cracks or other effects in a material. ”

“ Optical theory progressed in the mid-17th century with treatises written by philosopher René Descartes. He explained a variety of optical phenomena including reflection and refraction by assuming that light was emitted by objects which produced it. Does that work? User:ScienceApologist In 1690, Christian Huygens proposed a wave theory for light based on suggestions that had been made by Robert Hooke in 1664. ”

“ Classical electromagnetism isn't so much an assumption as it is a framework. OK, I'm making the change I suggested. "Quantum optics deals with the best model of light scientists have developed to date: the photon." I really like this sentence: it reminds us that science may progress further and develop yet better models. psychology?? I hope it explains later in the article how this is related. Optical illusions. Ah! emission theory: Instead of the wikilink to wikipedia:Emission theory perhaps what you want is to link to wikipedia:Emission theory (vision) . ”

“ Today, people are too afraid to step on other people's toes. Since we have a record of all the diffs in the history of this article, there is no problem with you making a change or even a mistake because, joy of joys, anyone can fix it! ScienceApologist (talk) 01:31, 8 April 2009 (UTC) OK, great! Here are some suggestions.
discovery of light being electromagnetic waves: I could be wrong, but I think it was Faraday who figured this out first, and that because of a learning disability, he wasn't able to write it in the form of equations, which is why Maxwell got the credit for the equations. ”

“ A "blackbody" appears black because it absorbs light and a perfectly reflective body appears "white" because it reflects sunlight. A "blue" object appears blue because it reflects blue light most efficiency and absorbs blue light least efficiently (those are equivalent statements) . Not sure where to include this point, but let me know if you can find a place. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:02, 22 May 2009 (UTC) Someone at Talk:Optics said, "Now the optics article is mainly composed of stuff from other wikipedia articles integrated and connected. ”

“ The content should only be moved to Wikipedia by SA himself/herself. For a content edit of this size, GFDL licensing requires that the author receive proper attribution, and the best way to do that is to have the author make the edit themselves and be listed in the article history. ”

“ User:ScienceApologist 19:14, 9 April 2009 (UTC) I agree that writing a good article is hard. Just because I'm able to find some minor things to change doesn't necessarily mean I could write an article like that myself (or at least not without a tremendous amount of work) . Coppertwig (talk) 22:43, 10 April 2009 (UTC) Gaussian optics? While rewriting the section on reflection, I deleted the equations. Partly this was because I was trying to make the section a less-technical summary, leaving the mathematical detail to the main article on reflection. ”

“ User:ScienceApologist which are similar to visible light but are not detectable by the naked human eye - I see that you have said "naked human eye" since the assisted human eye can see infrared and ultraviolet, but I wonder if this is implied by the phrase "human eye" itself? ”

“ I've looked at this more carefully, and while I agree that there are three physical reflections, I believe that the "third" reflection, being mutually perpendicular to the other two, will not cause a third mirror image to form (since it is mutually perpedicular) . Therefore, I think that the three corner reflector only has two parity operations. Of course, we can check this out by looking at one's image in a three-corner reflector. User:ScienceApologist OK, I arranged three mirrors mutually perpendicular. ”

“ A dielectic is an electric insulator. There's a wikipedia article on the subject. I'll just link to it. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:09, 22 May 2009 (UTC) In wavelength ranges where a medium has significant absorption, the index of refraction can increase with wavelength. This is called "anomalous dispersion" - It is best not to have one-sentence paragraphs. Awadewit (talk) 02:20, 26 April 2009 (UTC) Fixed. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:09, 22 May 2009 (UTC) Can you move the polarization diagrams to the center of the page? That would be more aesthetically pleasing. ”

“ It's fine now. (except maybe for Faraday) ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:37, 23 May 2009 (UTC) Please explain why scattering in the atmosphere would cause polarization. What's asymmetric? Oh, wait, I get it: it's the scattered light that's polarized. I changed the wording so it sounds more as if it's talking about the scattered light, rather than the light that is continuing to pass through the atmosphere in its original direction. You got it. The first paragraph of Modern Optics almost makes me feel like starting a new career in one of those fields! ”

“ Minor comments, and length of article (not so minor, perhaps) Re this edit: the index of refraction is not a "formula". It is a physical property of the medium. We describe the physical property by a formula. I dropped the comment that it is unitless only because I couldn't find a convenient way to work that back into the sentence.
Re User:ScienceApologist/Optics workshop#Reflections: I don't think it is correct to say that the difference between specular and diffuse reflection is that one "maintains paraxiality". The law of reflection holds outside the paraxial approximation. ”

“ This raises the question of whether you should move the "History" to the end of the article, foregrounding the actual physics itself, so that any readers who drop out of the article early have actually read about the physics of optics. Something to consider. Awadewit (talk) 03:50, 14 April 2009 (UTC) Classical optics: Geometrical optics Classical optics works by modeling light as an electromagnetic wave composed of oscillating electric and magnetic fields. These fields continually generate each other according to Maxwell's equations as the wave propagates through space and oscillates in time. ”

“ I'm changing it to "... are the angles between the line normal to the plane of the interface" Coppertwig (talk) 23:24, 10 April 2009 (UTC) The interface need not be a plane. The normal is a line that intersects the surface at the point the ray does, and is perpendicular to the surface at that point. ”