Prague, Czech Republic

Optics and Optoelectronics

Master's
Language: EnglishStudies in English
Subject area: physical science, environment
Years of study: 2
University website: www.cuni.cz
Optics
Optics is the branch of physics which involves the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light. Because light is an electromagnetic wave, other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays, microwaves, and radio waves exhibit similar properties.
Optoelectronics
Optoelectronics is the study and application of electronic devices and systems that source, detect and control light, usually considered a sub-field of photonics. In this context, light often includes invisible forms of radiation such as gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet and infrared, in addition to visible light. Optoelectronic devices are electrical-to-optical or optical-to-electrical transducers, or instruments that use such devices in their operation. Electro-optics is often erroneously used as a synonym, but is a wider branch of physics that concerns all interactions between light and electric fields, whether or not they form part of an electronic device.
Optics
For any man with half an eye,
What stands before him may espy;
But optics sharp it needs I ween,
To see what is not to be seen.
John Trumbull, McFingal (1775-1782), Canto I, line 67.
Optics
Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.
Claude Debussy, as quoted in Greatness : Who Makes History and Why by Dean Keith Simonton, p. 110
Optics
As men of inward light are wont
To turn their optics in upon't.
Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part III (1678), Canto I, line 481, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 593
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