Optical Bench

As you work through the steps in the lab procedure, record your experimental values and the results on this worksheet. Use the exact values you record for your data to make later calculations.

Part I: Light Beams

In Part I(b), as you moved the focal point from 50 to 200 on the optical axis, the lens.

In Part I(c), the reason the colored rays are dispersed so that you can see individual colored rays is because the is different for each color of the spectrum. This phenomenon is referred to as of light.

Part II: Ray Diagram

Step 1: What is the object distance? Knowing that the focal point is at 50, calculate the image distance.

Step 2: What is the object distance?  What is the calculated image distance?

Step 3: When you moved the object along the optical axis progressively closer to the lens, you saw the rays change and an image appeared to the left of the object. Complete the following sentences for the image that appeared to the left of the object.

(a) The image was.

(b) The image distance was.