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In a solid, crystal structure, atoms may be arranged in different ways in different directions. When light enters the crystal, you can decompose its electric field alongside those directions, and its …

It's a standard calculation that you'll find in any optic book studying diffraction gratings. In a nutshell: The wave starting from slit number 0 can be written as: $$s_0(x,t)=Ae^{i(\omega t-kx)}$$ Fr …

Geometric optics defines a light ray, roughly speaking and using modern terms, as the trajectory of a photon as a pure particle, which would be your second definition. … Wave optics has to come up with a different definition, since there's no "particle" photon in this model. …

If you're talking about a real experiment, the answer is $c/v_g$, with $v_g$ the group velocity. In some cases $v_g$ may simply be equals to phase velocity, but it's still important to distinguish the …

An answer only for the first part of your question: It's absorption. You can see it more clearly in Poynting's theorem, where you can relate the fact that the refractive index has an imaginary part wi …

It's impossible to "stand inside a rainbow" because there is no such place. A rainbow (or, more accurately, a series of rainbows) is the result of multiple reflections from light rays coming from the …

For a counterexample, for a thin lens: $$\frac{1}{p'}-\frac{1}{p}=\frac{1}{f'} \quad\text{with}\quad \begin{cases} p=\overline{OA} & \text{object}\\ p'=\overline{OA'} & \text{image} \end{cases}$$ The …

Physically speaking, no. However, some formula like Snell's law look a lot alike for lens and mirror, you can switch from one to the other by (formally) changing the sign of the optical index. Briefly …

There is no universal standard for naming those solutions. For mechanical or electromagnetic waves, a stationary wave is a wave that doesn't travel, typically of the form: $$s(x,t)=A\cos(kx)\cos(\omeg …

When light hits the edge of the droplet (from the inside as well as from the outside), it can undergo a reflection as well as a refraction. So there can be several reflections inside the droplet befor …

Here's, however, how I usually explain this to my students, usually during and after both quantum physics and optics lessons. … In my optics lesson about diffraction grating, I in fact spend most of the time doing interference computations, and not that much diffraction. …

Yes it does. A common version on the double slit experiment is, in fact, the one you describe. You can, for instance, install a narrow hole with the primary light source behind it. This hole will act …