Three simple optics simulations

For one week I went to Birmingham University, to the School of Physics and Astronomy, to do my work experience and while there I worked with a programming program called Scratch. I used Scratch to do different little programs, all to do with light and optics. The first program I made was about the reflectivity of a mirror, to do with how the reflectivity affected the amount of light that was reflected/passed through. Secondly I made a program that showed how the optical thickness of a medium affects how light is refracted, and how the angle of a light beam going into a mirror affects the reflected light’s angle. Then, I made a third program that showed how a Michelson interferometer works. You can run these programs yourself by clicking on the images below (Javascript and Java must enabled in your browser settings for these programs to run).

           

Scratch is a program that helps younger people to learn about programming and develop skills that can be used in computing and mathematics. This program can be downloaded for free for Windows and Mac from the website http://scratch.mit.edu. That page also has many examples and projects made by other people and also support for any problems with the program.