Magnifying Visors

What would be a good optics paper topic?

The only criteria is that it covers some aspect of optics or light. I only ask cause it has to be 10 pages, and i can't seem to come up with anything i can cover for that long. also, its an entry level course, there's no math involved. Any topics that are not overly complicated would be great.

Public Comments

1. something on optical computing i.e. using light instead of electrons. You could also use the superpositioning polarity ability of light to do Quantum computing. This is parrallel computing which enables more information to be processed faster at the same time
2. Ten pages may seem like a lot, but it's really only about 2,500 words. That's shorter than most magazine features or investigative news stories. A reporter can knock off an in-depth, 4,000-word feature in a week. You could do this in three days if you worked on it. Still, you don't want your topic to be too specific, or you'll run out of material at around 700 to 1,000 words. How about "refraction and wavelength"? There's a lot of material to be covered in this topic, from rainbows and prisms, to what makes the surface of soap bubbles look all squirmy and multicolored, to why your foot looks weird when it's submerged in water, to how magnifying lenses work (and how concave lenses are different from convex ones). That's probably 25 pages right there, but if you don't feel you can stretch it out to 10, you could expand it to "refraction and reflection" or, better yet, even "refraction vs. reflection" (focusing on how the two CONFLICT--conflict always gives you more interesting material, and is faster to write.) Other than that, you'd be stuck with writing 10 pages on fiberoptic technology, which I wouldn't envy, or the electromagnetic spectrum, which I would defy you to get more than two pages out of. If you're into chemistry and/or pop culture, a technical history of photography and film would easily fill 10 pages. -- Hm. The photography/filmmaking one would be less math-oriented, if this is a 100-level class. (Or 1000-level, whatever they're calling them now.) You could even do a general historical overview of human technologies for creating light, and how technological developments may have affected society. From the birth of fire, through the invention of the window and weird chambers that light up only around the summer solstice, for instance, through candles and oil lamps and lanterns and the whale-oil trade, through the incandescent bulb, and then fluorescence and finally the development of the LED.