Lucretius, Calvino, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Powers of Ten

Why Seven Universes? Scale Models

The importance of theory (definition: Systematically organized knowledge applicable in a relatively wide variety of circumstances, especially a system of assumptions, accepted principles, and rules of procedure devised to analyze, predict, or otherwise explain the nature or behavior of a specified set of phenomena - from American Heritage Dictionary);

Ray theory - reflection and refraction;

Observer's Triangle

7U.1, 7U.7,

7U.5

Pinhole cameras and parallax; Aristotle's mistake.

The eye as a pinhole camera (sort-of): lenses and refraction

Selected readings 1

7U.8, 9.

Selected Readings 6 (pp. 59-66)

Color vision: color from black and white;

Vision: resolving power, anatomy of the retina.

(Visual acuity)

SR Ch 4, 5, 6, 8, 9

Distance dimming and the inverse square law

(Evolution of the eye (PBS))

Evolution of eyes

Where'd you get those peepers?

Life's Grand Design

Wright plates
Sacks plates

Mid-Semester Break

Mar 22

Mar 29

Black body radiation

Photons and Planck's Law

• The "ultraviolet catastrophe"
• Dark lines in the (otherwise continuous) solar spectrum
  from UToledo, NASA space flight center, and l'Observatoire de Paris
• The emission line spectrum of a gas disharge tube
• Fluorescence
• Photoelectric effect
• The quantization of light
• The wave nature of the electron

7U. 12-15,
SR 3
Particle Adventure;
Primer on light and color

Color of bb at different T

How we see dim stars (review SR 6 & 7)

1. How dim? (See distance dimming, 7U 9)

2. Signal processing

a. In the dark: the resting state
How neurons work; Synaptic transmission
Photoreceptors aren't typical nerve cells

b. In the light:
Rhodopsin; Conjugation in retinal; Conformational change in retinal; Signal Transduction; Signal amplification; quenching

c. Can we see one photon?
spatial summation
temporal summation

3. Dark adaptation

4. Disc replacement

For those who want to know more:
Where vision begins;
The Joy of Visual Perception

Origin of the elements