This site is designed as a convenient location for our visitors to view the various Java tutorials that we have constructed to aid in teaching concepts in light and color.

Java Development Laboratory - This tutorial allows students to visit our Java development laboratory at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory where these tutorial-applets are created.

Optical Diffraction - This tutorial explores diffraction of light through an adjustable slit (or aperture). Visitors can adjust the slit width and the wavelength of light to discover how these variables affect optical diffraction.

Interference: The Double Slit Experiment - An interesting tutorial that explores diffraction of light through an adjustable set of double slits (or apertures). Visitors can adjust the distance between the slits and the wavelength of light to discover how these variables affect optical diffraction and interference of the diffracted light waves.

Electromagnetic Radiation - Have you ever played with an electromagnetic radiation wave? Well you can with this tutorial that allows you to move the wave around in three-dimensional space. Visitors can also adjust the wavelength to see how that affects the wave.

Jablonski Diagram - This tutorial explores excitation and decay pathways in fluorescence, phosphorescence, and delayed fluorescence. Visitors can choose between the three phenomena and see the various states that excited electrons pass through in returning to the ground state.

Electron Excitation and Emission - Examine how electrons in an atom are excited into higher energy states by photons of varying wavelengths. This tutorial permits visitors to vary the photon wavelength to propel the electrons into various energy levels.

Interference - Interference between two light waves is an amazing phenomenon that is often seen in soap bubbles with the wide color spectrum that they reflect. This tutorial allows students to add two light waves together and view the result. The frequency, wavelength, and amplitude of the waves are variable, allowing the production of practically all combinations resulting from interference between two waves.

Optical Birefringence - This tutorial explores birefringence or double refraction of light when passed through a crystal of Iceland spar. Students can move the crystal over the image of a ball-point pen and some text to explore how birefringence affects the refraction and polarization of light.

Brewster's Angle - When light passes from one medium to another, a portion of the light is polarized and reflected as a function of the refractive index of the second medium. This tutorial explores how changes in refractive index affect the amplitude and reflection angle of incident light.

Simple Magnification - Explore how a simple magnifying glass works with this tutorial designed to explain the concept of magnification. The visitor can use the mouse cursor to move a magnifying glass to change the image enlargement of an object.

Interactive Lens Action Tutorials - This set of tutorials examines lens action as a function of lens shape. Examine the difference between negative and positive lenses on image formation and visit our variable lens Java and Flash tutorials.

Concave Mirrors - A tutorial that shows reflection of an object from a concave mirror. The student is able to move the object back and forth and view what happens to the reflected image.

Concave Mirrors - The Virtual Image -- This tutorial demonstrates how a virtual image is formed on the opposite side of an object's reflection in a concave mirror.

Convex Mirrors - A tutorial that demonstrates simple image reflection of an object with a convex mirror. The visitor can adjust the position of the object with respect to the mirror to see how it affects the resulting image.

Reflection of Light - This tutorial explores the reflection of a single electromagnetic visible light wave. The wavelength and incident angle of reflection are adjustable to demonstrate the changes these variables can make to the wave reflection.

Refraction of Light - Related to the previous tutorial, this applet demonstrates how a single wavelength of light is refracted by various media. The student can change the index of refraction of the media, as well as the angle and wavelength of the incident light.

Polarization of Light - This tutorial allows visitors to interactively block or pass light waves by controlling the alignment of polarizers with an incident light beam.

Prism Refraction - The prism tutorial explores how changes in the thickness and angle of incidence of a visible light beam affect how light is refracted by a prism.

Human Vision - Exploring how images are created on the retina of a human eye, this tutorial allows the student to adjust the distance of an object from the eye to vary the size of the image.

Primary Colors

Primary Additive Colors - Light is perceived as white by humans when all three cone cell types are simultaneously stimulated by equal amounts of red, green, and blue light. Because the addition of these three colors yields white light, the colors red, green, and blue are termed the primary additive colors. This tutorial explores how the three primary additive colors interact with each other, both in pairs or all together.

Primary Subtractive Colors - The complementary colors (cyan, yellow, and magenta) are also commonly referred to as the primary subtractive colors because each can be formed by subtracting one of the primary additives (red, green, and blue) from white light. This tutorial explores how the three primary subtractive colors interact with each other, both in pairs or all together.

Color Filters - Examine how color filters operate to change the color of objects visualized under filtered illumination. The tutorial enables visitors to drag and drop red, green, and blue virtual color filters over objects illuminated both with white light and also previously filtered with one of the primary additive colors.

Color Separation - Pigments and dyes are responsible for most of the color that humans see in the real world. Books, magazines, signs, and billboards are printed with colored inks that create colors through the process of color subtraction. This interactive tutorial explores how individual subtractive primary colors can be separated from a full-color photograph, and then how they can be reassembled to create the original scene.

Color Temperature - This tutorial explores the effect of raising the temperature of a black body radiator. The example is a black pot that can be "heated" with a slider to raise the color temperature of the pot.

Lasers - This tutorial explores how a ruby laser crystal works when excited by a xenon flash tube. As photon energy is "pumped" into the crystal by the flash tube, the internal crystal photons reflect on the mirrored ends of the crystal until they have achieved enough energy to escape in the form of a laser beam.

Moiré Patterns - Moiré fringes arise from interference patterns that are generated when two similar grids overlap each other. The result is a series of fringe patterns that change shape as the grids are translated with respect to one another. One of the more common occurrences of moiré patterns is found in computer monitors and television sets where we see an ordered wavy pattern superimposed over the screen in a series of ripples. Moiré patterns also are a common problem in scanned images due to optical interference between the printed dot pattern and the reflection of the image.