Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Optics


I was drinking a glass of water in the kitchen, and set it down on the counter.  Turns out the sun was shining through the window on to the counter, and when I looked down, I was amazed at what I saw.  The glass with the water in it was functioning as a lens, and it focused some of the light into a bright little triangle.  Meanwhile, other parts of the glass created interesting shadows on the counter.  Who knew you could get such interesting things from sunlight and a glass of water!



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very cool. Glad you explained what this was as I am not sure I would have guessed.
Joan

Dean said...

Ken-
Note also on the INSIDE of the glass where the some sunlight reflects off the inner glass surface and also comes to a focus (actually, likely a "caustic"). -Dean

Anonymous said...

Cool photo because it takes a while to figure out what we're looking at...bsk