Physics & Astronomy

Over the past several years, the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Brigham Young University has developed an advanced optics course for undergraduates under the direction of Justin B. Peatross. This web page provides access to resources related to this course. To access a specific resource, choose from the menu on the left.

The textbook used for this course may be freely used for non-profit educational purposes. The text discusses electromagnetic wave phenomena, including polarization effects, interference, coherence, dispersion, ray theory, and diffraction. We are developing an introduction to quantum nature of light. The laboratory component emphasizes applications, and demonstrate the basic optics principles. Each lab has an instructional video that can be acceessed on this site. We are also in the process of making animations and other illustrations to illustrate basic optics principles

This project is supported in part by the National Science Foundation Division of Undergraduate Education (Grant number DUE-9952773).