Advanced Optics Lab Development

These activities work best for junior or senior level physics majors who are ready for activities that are more open-ended and less prescribed. In the course evaluations, the students really enjoyed the opportunity to explore topics on their own with the availability to come to the faculty member for guidance. The labs are designed for students working in groups of two, where each student took turns writing in the lab notebook and working with the optical set-up. Although the activities worked with 3 students, the third student was generally not as engaged as the other two. These labs were part of a lab course taught in the term after the lecture course; however, these labs could also taught as part of a lab associated with an upper-level optics elective. The diffractive optics lab assumes the students are familiar with Fourier transforms.

The cost of the acousto-optic modulator and the driver were about $3000. The cost of one spatial filter, objective, and pinholes, and mounting supplies is about $1200. The selection of slits and apertures will be above and beyond this. You can be create about the objects to keep costs down. For example students can use a strand of their hair, the edge of a ruler, the mesh of a piece of sheer fabric or a geology sieve, a blood smear slide from the biology department, etc.

The photonics project, which is designed to be completed over a 10 week term, could be integrated into either a lab course or a lecture course. The project involves library research and contains a written and oral component.

For the acousto-optics lab, the teaching materials are in the form of a lab handout (AOM Lab Handout (Acrobat (PDF) 55kB Jul12 12)) for the students as well as notes my personal lab notebook (Lab Notebook (Acrobat (PDF) 308kB Oct31 11)) for setting up the lab and several of the measurements performed. The students are given reading from the textbook to refresh their memory on the topic of the lab. Although the material was covered in the PHYS 344 which is a prerequisite for the lab, the reading is designed to refocus their attention on this material. Next students perform a series of problems (Pre-Lab Exercises (Acrobat (PDF) 28kB Oct31 11)) related to calculations they may need to do as part of their data analysis or calculations that allow them to set-up the lab with the appropriate considerations (e.g., appropriate angle of incidence for bragg matching a particular acoustic frequency). Next the students choose a particular aspect of the topic to study with the materials available. Some guidance is given to the students, however the students are also allowed some flexibility to choose experiments and measurements.

The diffractive optics lab is completed as part of the Fourier optics lab. The teaching materials are in the form of a lab handout (Diffraction Optics Lab Handout (Acrobat (PDF) 166kB Jul12 12)), a supplemental handout on the theory behind spatial filtering (Newport, Projects in Optics Workbook, product number 16291-01, pages 34-35), and pre-lab exercises (Diffraction Optics Pre-Lab Exercises (Acrobat (PDF) 24kB Jul12 12)). The spatial filter part of the the lab is set-up and mostly aligned for the students before the lab because the initial set-up can take hours for individuals who are not familiar with this technique. The student adjust the spatial filter to optimize it. A wide selection of slit and aperture patterns are provided for students to explore during this lab. The students try to determine/verify the size of the slits/apertures. Chose to take images of their patterns for their lab notebooks.

The Photonics Project provides an opportunity for students to explore some area of optics that they are interested in, research the topic, present it to their peers in multiple forms, and also present their topic to a non-physics peer audience. These are all activities that professional scientists must engage in as a regular part of their activities. There are 3 parts to this project: a paper and 30-minute presentation geared towards their peers in the class and a creative project designed to present their topic to a non-physics peer audience. A non-peer audience includes, but is not limited to: college students who are not science majors, college-educated educated adults who are not necessarily scientists, middle or elementary school students, high school physics students. Included with this activity is a description of the activity (Photonics Project Description (Microsoft Word 33kB Oct30 11)), a grading sheet for the paper (Paper Grade Sheet (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 14kB Oct30 11)), a peer-evaluation form for the class presentation (Presentation Peer Evaluation Form (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 13kB Oct30 11)), and a gradesheet for the evaluation of the class presentation (Presentation Grade Sheet (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 12kB Oct30 11)), and instructor notes (Photonics Project Instructor Notes (Microsoft Word 29kB Oct30 11)).