What is the nature of light? How does it compare with other waves?

What property of light allows us to see and to form images with lenses?

What is the connection between lens focal length and lens strength?

What does the optometrist measure when he/she writes a lens prescription?

How do you determine the focal length? The image position?

How are images formed by mirrors?

What is happening when a person is nearsighted? farsighted? How are these common eye defects corrected?

How does the eye accomodate for close vision?

How does the eye compare to a camera?

Relate the image forming process to simple optical instruments.

What properties and behaviors of light lead us to believe that they are composed of waves?

What is color? What properties of light are associated with color?

What causes the colors we see emerging from a prism? What causes the colors of the rainbow?

What other color and light phenomena in the sky appear to be wave phenomena?

How do polaroid sunglasses work? Is polarization a wave phenomenon?

How can diffraction of light be observed?

What determines the finest resolution of the images formed by the eye or by lenses?

How is color measured? Is there a precise method for matching two colors?

Describe the photoelectric effect. How does it indicate that light is composed of particles?

What aspects of the photoelectric effect experiment were surprising to the classical physicists of the day?

What is "blackbody radiation"? How does the "particle" view of light help explain it?

The failure of classical physics to explain blackbody radiation is called the "ultraviolet catastrophe". Explain the implications of this phrase.

What is a quantum of light called and what is the relationship which characterizes it?

How do you determine the temperature of a hot object using the blackbody radiation curve?