In-depth articles written by our editorial team focusing on the latest developments in materials science and technology
Photographs are now such a commonly used visual form of capturing and categorising our experiences and surroundings that it is difficult to imagine a world in which photography did not operate.
By James Brookes
8 Apr 2015
Optical resolution is the physical resolution at which an imaging device can capture an image. The term is mostly used in connection to optical scanners and digital cameras.
A pinhole camera, also known as camera obscura or "dark chamber", is a simple camera that has a single small aperture called pinhole instead of a lens. The concept of pinhole camera was published in the Book of Optics in 1021 AD by Persian scientist Ibn al-Haytham.
Magnifying power is defined as the ratio between the dimensions of the image and the object. The process of magnification can occur in lenses, telescopes, microscopes and even in slide projectors. Simple magnifying lenses are biconvex - these lenses are thicker at the center than at the edges.
The CCD (charge coupled device) was first invented at the Bell laboratories in the 1960s. CCDs are thin wafers which consist of a number of buried electrodes that facilitate the movement of electrons from the device to a desired point.
Polarization of a light wave is defined as a type of orientation of oscillations of the wave with respect to the direction of propagation of the wave.
A Lambertian surface for reflection is a surface that appears uniformly bright from all directions of view and reflects the entire incident light. Lambertian reflectance is the property exhibited by an ideal matte or diffusely reflecting surface.
An aperture is an opening or a hole through which light passes by. In an optical system, the aperture is the opening that defines the cone angle of a set of light rays that converges at a focal point in an image plane.
The principal planes are two hypothetical planes found in a lens system at which all the refraction is deemed to occur. The position of the principal planes are fixed and do not depend upon the position of the object
Refraction is a phenomenon that happens when waves passing from one transparent medium to another bend at the boundary between the two mediums.
By Ben Arnold
19 Sep 2014