Questions tagged [optical-materials]
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Why is glass transparent?
Once I asked this question from my teacher and he replied "Because it passes light.". "And why does it pass light?" I asked and he said, "Because it is transparent.".
The same question again, Why ...
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If we repeatedly divide a colorful solid in half, at what point will the color disappear?
Suppose I have some colorful solid, which I cut into two halves (both are identical). Take the first and cut it into two parts, and then repeat this again and again. I know that a single atom doesn't ...
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How can the refractive index be below 1 in a dielectric?
Upon checking the optical properties of different dielectrics, I found the interesting case of $Al_2O_3$. It seems to be reported with a refractive index below 1 in the infrared range of $10 - 12~\mu ...
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Why is diamond transparent while graphite is not?
Diamond and graphite are both made of the same atom, carbon. Diamond has a tetrahedron structure while graphite has a flat hexagonal structure. Why is diamond transparent while graphite is not (at ...
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Are there yet Optical Magnetic Mirrors (OMMs) which reflect via interaction with the magnetic field?
update 2021: As the question has remained unanswered for five years and the field of optical metamaterials has advanced, I think this question can be revisited.
The most familiar mirror relies on ...
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Why does optical media have different refractive indices?
Optical density is a measure of the refracting power of a medium. In other words, the higher the optical density, the more the light will be refracted or slowed down as it moves through the medium. ...
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Ideal surface for a perfect lens
in this physics lecture, on slide 15-16, it is found that the ideal surface for a perfect lens (which maps a plane wavefront into a perfect spherical wavefront, i.e. which makes focus all input ...
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Why are the edges of a broken glass almost opaque?
Unfortunately I broke my specs today which I used in this question.
But I observed that the edges are completely different then the entire part of the lens. The middle portion of the lens was ...
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Is the visible light spectrum from "red-hot glass" at least close to Blackbody Radiation?
Briefly, for visibly transparent materials like glass, you can see through then even while they are glowing red hot. Most glasses have plenty of absorption in the IR, so there is plenty of absorption ...
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Why do everyday plastic items interfere with light polarizers?
I recently bought a few pieces of linearly polarized film (the one intended for smartphone LCD screens). At first I was confused because I could not make the polarizers work as they should - no matter,...
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Are special relativity calcs affected by media?
Time dilation, increase in mass, Lorentz contraction calcs all involve velocity of light in vacuum. But in optical media light slows down. So what of relativity calcs in media? Do we ever need to ...
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Slowing down light in an opaque crystal for a whole minute
I just read about a team of physicists at the University of Darmstadt, Germany, that managed to completely slow down a beam of light that traveled through an opaque crystal (article here).
How is it ...
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Why can't ultraviolet light pass through glass?
What factor determine whether a body behaves like a transparent object for EM waves of a particular frequency?
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Why are there direct bandgaps?
This Question has been bugging me for sometime. Some semiconductors have direct bandgaps and indirect bandgaps. So what causes a direct bandgap to occur? The physics behind ,why there are direct ...
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What plastic-like materials allow IR to pass through them? [closed]
What plastic-like materials allow IR to pass through them?
Material should be solid and plastic like. Does't care if it is transparent to light or not.
IR ray is emitted by Sharp distance center so it ...
