Visual Communications Science Course Ideas

[mwfanelli]

People in the Visual Communications Department here at the college have asked me to create a general requirements science course for their photography students. They actually required a small portfolio of my photographs to see if I had a clue! Anyway... The course has been listed for the spring semester as "Physics of Light."

I need ideas from those of you are are not science-minded geeks like me. The course will be activity-based, meaning lots of demos, activities, and labs. It deals with any topics of light and color. I have thought about the obvious, such as building and doing the physics of pinhole cameras, but...

If you were required to take a science course such as this, what would like to learn about the science of color and light? The whys and hows of...? Remember, their science options up until now have been, ugh, general biology or A&P! I am trying to save them from that horror.

Thanks!

[Asylum Steve]

This sounds like fun, Michael. Definitely the kind of course I would have taken in school.

BTW, as an art major at FSU, I actually signed up for an Optics course because of my facination with lenses and such, but it was a regular Physics Department class, and after the first week, I was bored to tears and dropped it... :crazy:

Speaking of optics, if you plan to cover that, I can think of a lot of cool things to include such as depth of field, bokeh, focal lengths, angle of view, etc.

I don't know where this would fit in, but one thing I also find interesting is the atmosphere's effect on the color and quality of light at different times of the day.

Just a few things off the top of my head. I'm sure we'll be able to come up with a lot more...

[mwfanelli]

BTW, as an art major at FSU, I actually signed up for an Optics course because of my facination with lenses and such, but it was a regular Physics Department class, and after the first week, I was bored to tears and dropped it... :crazy:

Yeah, it is sad that so many physics departments have no clue about their students and live in a private little world. I and another professor have tried hard to create courses that are relevent, interesting, and still rigourous, especially at the "100 level", those general requirement courses.

Speaking of optics, if you plan to cover that, I can think of a lot of cool things to include such as depth of field, bokeh, focal lengths, angle of view, etc.

We have lots of cool optics stuff I never used yet. Yeah, DOF and focal lengths, etc. are great ideas, we can actually measure that stuff. I'll look up some interesting physics for those. Bokeh... well I'm not sure how scientific that is...

I don't know where this would fit in, but one thing I also find interesting is the atmosphere's effect on the color and quality of light at different times of the day.

Excellent! I didn't even think of that. Yeah, that's color temperature that varies all the time even though we don't see the small changes. I could also go into the quality of light related by season, intensities, scattering... Lots of experiments and activities here. I think we have sensors that can measure this stuff. Cool!

Thanks for the suggestions. I think I can make this a really interesting course.

[drg]

Don't forget Camera Obscura and the entire pinhole topic.

[Photo-John]

This is a great ViewFinder topic!

I think the pinhole camera is a must.

Photograms

Polarizers

How digital imaging sensors work

How lenses work

Optical illusions

Exposure

That's all I can think of right now. Will add to the list as I have more ideas. I might even point Photo Dad to this discussion as he's an optics phycist and a photographer

[mjs1973]

Could you do something about reciprocity failure? Maybe work out the physics of how and why it happens? Something along those lines may be interesting.

[mtbbrian]

This is a great ViewFinder topic!

I think the pinhole camera is a must.

Photograms

I know in some courses like this, they use Holgas.
Photograms are great ways to teach about composition elements.
Brian

[SmartWombat]

I want a course that Feynman would want to attend

So not just the optics, some perceptual (neuro-) psychology, colour vision, biology of the eye, electronics of the sensor, chemistry of film/developers, don't forget the optics, polarisation (brewster's angle), biological use of polarisation (bees shrimps, cuttlefish), media use of polarisation (theme park 3D - field trip!), press printing processes (litho, offset, flexo), subtractive/additive colour, lighting (colour temperature), depth of field, depth of focus, aperture, make your own extension tubes (and do the maths for exposure), how electronic flash works, shutter systems (BTL vs FP), digital image compression (stick to RLE, keep it simple), signal and noise, mathematics of the histogram, print colour separation, halftone, screening, TV image production (use NTSC or PAL), interlaced vs progressive scan, HD, image projection (film, dmd, lcd), holography, pepper's ghost (The world's largest implementation of this illusion can be found at the Haunted Mansion and Phantom Manor attractions at three Walt Disney Parks and Resorts theme parks) ...

Make it widely cross-disiplinary and interesting while remining relevant to communications and scientifically rigorous.

I know, I know I've gone way beyond "Physics of Light" but I've listed what I woudl want to cover - particularly the theme park behind the scenes field trips

[mwfanelli]

Wonderful ideas people! I knew I could count on y'all.