Anti-Reflection Coating
A quarter-wave coating thins away to nothing and the reflected leg returns with it while the reflectance gauge fills, then the layer rebuilds and cancels it again.
CSS
Optics
15 animationsBeam Splitter
A beam meets a splitter at forty-five degrees and its share slides from the transmitted leg to the turned one, the ratio bar below handing the same share across.
CSSConverging Lens
A parallel bundle through a converging lens releases its focal point and runs flat, then pulls back in until the focus marker lands on the axis again.
CSSCrossed Polarisers
An analyser turns a half revolution over a fixed polariser and the transmitted intensity gauge beside it falls to extinction and returns.
CSSDiffraction Orders
The ruling of a grating closes up and its diffracted orders walk outward along the detector, the zero order holding the axis.
CSSDispersion Fan
A single beam leaving a prism closes into one undivided ray and opens again into a five-way fan about the mean deviation.
CSSFocus Pull
A lens element runs back along its rail while the disc on the sensor plane opens from a point into a circle of confusion and the sharpness bar empties with it.
CSSFringe Shift
A reference mirror walks along its axis and the interference fringes on the screen slide with it, the whole pattern shifting order by order.
CSSGradient Index
A ray crossing stratified layers straightens out into one undeviated line and curves back into the arc of a ray that has turned right around inside the gradient.
CSSGuided Mode
A ray launched into a step-index fibre leaks out through the cladding while its angle sits outside the acceptance cone, then locks into a guided zig-zag when it comes back inside.
CSSRayleigh Limit
The iris stops down and the two point images on the detector broaden past the dashed Rayleigh circles until they run into one another as a single unresolved spot.
CSSScanning Mirror
A galvanometer facet turns through its range and the reflected beam, swinging twice as far, sweeps its landing point the length of the target rule.
CSSSingle Slit
The jaws close on a slit and the diffraction envelope on the screen spreads up its axis and loses height, reaching the dashed reference profile.
CSSSnell's Law
A ray crossing a flat interface swings toward the normal as the index ratio of the lower medium rises, the gauge below reading the same change.
CSSWave Plate
Retardance runs from a quarter wave down to zero and back, and the polarisation trace closes from a circle onto the fast axis as a line before opening out again.
CSS