Waves And GrainsContents

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Preface

Chapter 1: Introduction: Setting the agenda

PART ONE: REFRACTION

Chapter 2: Following the straight and narrow

Chapter 3: How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky? Imaging in stratified media

3.1 Viewing through flat lenses

3.2 Locating virtual images

3.3 Imaging in a stratified gas

3.4 Imaging in a stratified liquid

3.5 Orbiting rays of light

Appendix: The ray equation

PART TWO: DIFFRACTION AND INTERFERENCE

Chapter 4: Dark spots---bright spots

Chapter 5: Newton's two-knife experiment: the hyperbolic enigma

5.1 A great discovery unpursued

5.2 Pasteboard, knives, and pitch

5.3 Diffraction at a wedge

5.4 The far-field shadow

5.5 The near-field illuminated region

5.6 Wide wedges

5.7 The shape of diffracting waves

Chapter 6: Young's two-slit experiment with electrons

6.1 Predictions

6.2 Making and breaking electrons

6.3 Coherence and interference

6.4 The video---and what it means

Chapter 7: Pursuing the invisible: imaging without lenses

7.1 Images and interference

7.2 Casting shadows

7.3 Brightness, coherence, and degeneracy

7.4 The world's simplest electron interferometer

7.5 Self-imaging of a periodic object

7.6 In-line electron holography: sharpening the image

7.7 Quantum physics in the new millennium

PART THREE POLARISATION

Chapter 8: Poles apart: the mysteries of light polarisation

Chapter 9: The state of light

9.1 Hidden polarisers

9.2 Defining the state of light

9.3 The density matrix

9.4 Transformations

9.5 The elliptical connection

9.6 Optical systems

9.7 A device for all seasons: the photoelastic modulator

9.8 The great PEM puzzle

PART FOUR REFLECTION AND SCATTERING

Chapter 10: The grand synthesis

Chapter 11: New twists on reflection

11.1 The pervasive hand of chiral asymmetry

11.2 Leaps and boundaries

11.3 Constitutive relations

11.4 Helicity waves and chiral reflection

11.5 The chiral Fabry-Perot interferometer

11.6 Gatherings: plus a change...

Appendix: Chiral reflection and transmission amplitudes

Chapter 12: Through a glass brightly: "Fresnel amplification"

12.1 The enigma of enhanced reflection

12.2 Waves in an excited medium

12.3 Beer's law and Fresnel's amplitudes

12.4 Singularities---or is there an upper limit?

12.5 Practical thoughts

Chapter 13: A penetrating look at scattered light

13.1 Harmony of a sphere

13.2 Scattering in a chiral sky

13.3 Seeing through turbidity

Appendix: Density matrix analysis of light scattering

PART FIVE PLAYING WITH WAVES

Chapter 14: Voice of the dragon

14.1 "Hearing" the light

14.2 Dragon notes

14.3 A Bernoulli pump

14.4 The dragon causes friction

PART SIX SCIENCE AND LEARNING

Chapter 15: A heretical experiment in teaching physics

15.1 Self-directed learning

15.2 The "Standard Model"

15.3 Basic premises

15.4 Implementation

15.5 Class work

15.6 Laboratory work

15.7 Out-of-class work

15.8 Assessing the unassessable

15.9 Progressions

Chapter 16: Why Brazil nuts are on top: physics and the art of writing

Chapter 17: What does it take...?

Index

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