Entry requirements

40 credits in science/engineering. Participation in one of the courses Mechanics KF and Mechanics Basic Course. Participation in Electromagnetism or the course may be taken in parallel.

Learning outcomes

On completion of the course, the student should be able to:

• account for fundamental quantities for waves and optics.
• identify, illustrate and explain physical concepts in waves and optics.
• explain and analyze wave propagation in media, especially solid materials, liquids and the earth's crust.
• describe and discuss technical applications of simple optical instruments.
• demonstrate analytic problem solving ability by using suitable models, assumptions and approximations,

  as well as be able to assess the results.

• plan and conduct simple experiments and give an oral and a written presentation of the results.

Content

Mechanical/acoustical waves: wave functions, the wave equation, superposition, standing waves, beats, mechanical waves in different media, Doppler effect.

Electromagnetic waves and optics: wave functions for plane waves, wave equations for E- and B-fields for propagating waves. The propagation of electromagnetic waves with reflection, refraction, dispersion, and phase velocity.

Optical phenomena such as polarisation, birefringence, coherence, interference and Fraunhofer diffraction. 

Geometrical optics: calculations of beam paths in thin lenses. Differences between beam optics (including matrix methods to describe ray paths) and wave optics.  Overview of optical instruments.

Laboratory exercises in polarisation, wave optics and ray optics.

Instruction

Lectures, exercise groups, laboratory exercises.

Assessment

Written examination at the end of the course (4 credits ). Laboratory exercises with written and oral reports (1 credit).

If there are special reasons for doing so, an examiner may make an exception from the method of assessment indicated and allow a student to be assessed by another method. An example of special reasons might be a certificate regarding special pedagogical support from the disability coordinator of the university.