Introduction
• Optics in one of the most interesting and
challenging areas of physics to teach.
– It relates directly to everyday experience.
– It relates to topics of much interest to many students
such as photography, movies, astronomy, and biology.
– It’s a class of phenomena where physics
has developed a number of different models
of increasing sophistication — rays, waves, photons.
– It’s an area where it has been demonstrated
that students are strongly resistant to learning
scientific reasoning.