Abstract

Most students of physics and engineering are exposed to optics for the first time during their final year in high school and/or during their first year in college. That first encounter is brief and superficial, in most cases. Hence, those students might have a negative prejudice against optics, when having to select advanced courses during their second and third year in college. If we, the optics professors, want to attract the brightest students as our junior researchers, we ought to offer an exciting and challenging “introduction to the fundamentals of optics” for the advanced under graduate students in a way that eliminates any negative prejudices already during the first hour of the course. To start the course with Snellius, with the lens equation, and with similar primitive issues would chase away many of the brightest students.

© 2000 SPIE