KOJAC

These web pages are a slightly updated revival of the original KOJAC web pages, that don’t exist anymore on the web site of the Applied Optics Group of IMT (formerly at the University of Neuchâtel, now at EPFL).

Optics Tutorials

Description

Aiming to present Optics in an interactive way, IMT has developed a set of programs and libraries for the creation of optical tutorials in Java. This framework completes the tutorials created by Dr. P. Blattner in TCL, but does not require the installation of any plugin. Moreover, tutorials can easily be developed or extended.

The tutorials themselves were developed by Olivier Scherler and Olivier Ripoll, based on ideas from Dr. P. Blattner, Prof. H. P. Herzig, Prof. R. Dändliker and Olivier Ripoll.

Mac users! Netscape 4 for Macintosh does not have a virtual machine capable of playing these tutorials. Please download a newer Java plugin, or use a newer browser: Internet Explorer, Netscape 6, Mozilla.

• Basic Optics
  • The aspherical surface: See the influence of the conic coefficient, the refraction indexes and the curvature of a surface on a incident beam with variable direction.
  • The plano-convex lens aberrations: Visualise the influence of the way a plano-convex lens is positionned on the quality of its focal point.
• Optical Systems
  • The field lens: Experiment the effect of the field lens - a lens situated in an image plane.
  • The achromat: Discover the chromatic aberrations, and the way to diminish them through the achromat system.

TCL Tutorials

The older tutorials can still be found here. They need the installation of a TCL plugin (untested). (installation process detailed here)

You will find there:

• Basic Optics
  • The paraxial lens: Move object position and size, change focal length and look at the resulting image
  • The paraxial lens doublet: Add a second lens to the previous tutorial.
  • The Gabor superlens: Visualise the superlens (sometimes called Gabor lens) paraxial properties.
  • The Planar interface: See the refracted ray and the reflected ray at a planar interface. Understand Total reflexion.
  • The aspherical surface: Experiment the influence of the conic coefficient, the curvature radius, and the refraction indices on a normally incident beam.
• Others
  • The Ewald sphere in holography: Play with the Ewald spheres for holographic recording/reconstruction.
  • The optical fibre: Play with the properties of a graded index fibre, and the incident rays.

More About KOJAC

The Java tutorials have been realised within the framework of KOJAC, a set of Java Classes for Optical Applets. These classes are distributed under the General Public License, and everyone is encouraged to extend them. KOJAC is at present at version 1.0, but development will go on based on training periods of student in our group. KOJAC itself is a pedagogical tool, not only for the user of the applet, but also for the programmer learning optics and Java through it.

More information about KOJAC is presented at its homepage.

Other Places of Interest

• International Light has a nice handbook presenting light measurement notions.
• The Optical Society of America (OSA) has sponsored a project of the University of Illinois called Optics Table. While this program is quite different of ours, some lessons are provided, which also illustrate some optics laws.
• Finally, Newport provides optics tutorials (and also other tutorials not optic related).