9 creatures with amazing ‘optical systems’
9 Creatures with Amazing Optical Systems
A tour of nature’s most impressive optical engineering, from the mantis shrimp’s 12 color receptors and infrared/UV/polarized vision to the ogre-faced spider’s disposable night-vision membranes. Nine animals whose eyes put human visual capabilities in perspective.
Super Cool Optics Startups: Latest Updates and New Additions
Our original Super Cool Optics Startups list’s popularity prompted an update to include six more we wanted to share with you. Exciting New Additions to the Super Cool Optics Startups List Organic Robotics Their stretchable smart fabrics deliver optically based accurate motion capture and pressure sensing at the speed of light with practical uses in […]
Designing optical systems with hot and cold mirrors
Filters for selecting specific wavelengths are common in optical systems. In our microscope design article we explained the use of dichroic mirrors to select fluorescent wavelengths. In some applications optical engineers need to filter out high (UV light) or lower frequencies (IR light). These kinds of filters are called “Hot and Cold mirrors” . For […]
Uses of Sapphire explained: IR optics, laser optics, windows
Introduction You may not be aware but you probably have in your hands one of the toughest substances in the world right now. If you own a good quality watch chances are that it has a sapphire glass. Also, some versions of Appla watches and almost all mobile phones use sapphire lenses on their cameras. […]
What is Birefringence?
In a previous post, we explained the concept of a material refractive index in optics in the context of optical design. Something that we didn’t review however is that many materials have two, three (and even more) different refractive indices depending on the direction and polarization of light. This is a very interesting (and often […]