Contents -- Preface to the First Edition -- Preface to the Second Edition -- Acknowledgements -- Chapter 1 Introducing Light -- 1.1 The perception of light through the ages -- The ancient Greeks -- The middle ages -- 1.2 Colours -- The visible spectrum -- 1.3 Measuring the speed of light -- The astronomical method -- Terrestrial measurement -- The speed of light in context -- 1.4 The process of vision -- 'Look and see' -- The journey of a photon -- The eye is like a digital camera -- Two computers - the back of the eye and the brain -- Reconstructing the object -- Why is the grass green? -- Seeing in the dark -- The branches of optics -- 1.5 The nature of light -- Contradictory evidence -- Light as a wave -- Maxwell's electromagnetic waves -- James Clerk Maxwell -- Light as a particle -- An illustration of duality? -- 1.6 The birth of quantum mechanics -- Particles have wave properties -- The Copenhagen interpretation -- The universal messenger -- Chapter 2 Light as a Ray: Reflection -- The quickest route -- 2.1 Fermat's principle -- Light takes the quickest route -- The path in empty space -- The quickest path via a reflection -- The law of reflection -- 2.2 Mirrors -- A plane mirror -- Reversal from left to right -- Reflection from a curved and uneven surface -- A spherical concave mirror -- Applications of concave mirrors -- Reflecting telescope -- The 'death rays' of Archimedes -- A historical interlude: Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665) -- Chapter 3 Light as a Ray: Refraction -- Providing more than one quickest route -- Making visible things we cannot see -- 3.1 Refraction -- The refractive index -- The lifeguard problem -- Snell's law -- The reverse journey -- Apparent depth -- The dilemma faced by light trying to leave glass -- Practical applications of total internal reflection -- Light pipes and optical fibres.

Freedom of choice when a ray meets a boundary -- The 'shop window effect' -- The mystery -- 'The photon decides' -- A practical puzzle - two-way mirrors -- 3.2 Lenses -- The function of a lens -- Converging lenses -- Diverging lenses -- Fermat's principle applied to lenses -- 3.3 Objects and images: converging lenses -- Ray tracing through a thin lens -- Principal rays (thin lenses) -- The lens equation -- Symmetry -- Breaking the symmetry -- An intuitive approach - the task of a lens -- Masking a lens -- 3.4 Objects and images: diverging lenses -- 3.5 Lens combinations -- Lenses in contact -- The power of a lens -- 3.6 The eye -- The structure of the eye -- Accommodation -- Common eye defects -- Myopia (short-sightedness) -- Hypermetropia (long-sightedness) -- Presbyopia -- Astigmatism -- 3.7 Making visible what the eye cannot see -- Distant objects -- Nearer but not clearer -- Angular magnification -- The simple magnifier -- 3.8 Combinations of lenses -- Compound microscopes -- Telescopes -- 3.9 A final note on Fermat's principle -- The pioneers of generalized classical mechanics -- Chapter 4 Light from Afar - Astronomy -- When light reaches us after a long, long journey -- 4.1 The earth -- Is the earth round? -- Philosophical reasons why the earth should be round -- General intuition - Zhang-Heng -- Experimental evidence that the earth is round -- 4.2 The moon -- The phases of the moon -- A lunar eclipse -- A solar eclipse -- 4.3 Sizes and distances -- Relative sizes of the sun and the moon -- The shadow of the earth on the moon -- Shrinking shadows -- The distance to the moon -- The distance to the sun -- A practical problem -- A summary concerning the earth, moon and sun -- Astronomical distances -- 4.4 The planets -- The 'wanderers' -- Ptolemy's geocentric model -- 4.5 The Copernican revolution -- Frames of reference.

Copernicus and the heliocentric model -- Where did the epicycles come from? -- 4.6 After Copernicus -- Looking back with hindsight: why Brahe did not see any parallax -- Kepler's discovery -- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) -- 4.7 The solar system in perspective -- A historical interlude: Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) -- Chapter 5 Light from the Past - Astrophysics -- 5.1 The birth of astrophysics -- Isaac Newton and gravitation -- Falling without getting nearer -- The mystery of gravitation -- Newton's law of gravitation -- Testing the law -- Acceleration of the moon towards the earth -- The period of the moon's orbit -- Explanation of Kepler's laws -- 5.2 The methods of astrophysics -- The moon and the falling apple -- Predicting the existence of new planets -- Why is Uranus 'misbehaving'? -- Neptune is there! -- Pluto -- 5.3 Other stars and their 'solar systems' -- Planets of other suns -- Other galaxies -- 5.4 Reconstructing the past -- The steady state cosmological model -- The Big Bang theory -- A blast from the past -- 5.5 The life and death of a star -- White dwarfs -- Supernovae -- Supernovae in other galaxies -- Pulsars -- Black holes -- Escape velocities -- How to 'see' the invisible -- A strange event in the Milky Way -- Time stands still -- A historical interlude: Isaac Newton (1642-1727) -- Chapter 6 Introducing Waves -- 6.1 Waves - the basic means of communication -- Mechanical waves in a medium -- Transverse waves -- Longitudinal waves -- 6.2 The mathematics of a travelling wave -- The making of a wave -- From the sine of an angle to the picture of a wave -- Generating the sine function -- An expression for a sine wave in motion -- 6.3 The superposition of waves -- The superposition principle -- The superposition of two waves travelling in the same direction -- Path difference and phase difference.

When two waves travelling in opposite directions meet -- A string fixed at both ends -- Standing waves -- 6.4 Forced oscillations and resonance -- 6.5 Natural frequencies of vibration and resonance -- The Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster -- The Mexico City earthquake -- 6.6 Diffraction - waves can bend around corners -- 6.7 The magic of sine and the simplicity of nature -- The sum of a number of sine waves -- A historical interlude: Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) -- Chapter 7 Sound Waves -- 7.1 Sound and hearing -- Sound as a pressure wave -- The speed of sound -- Ultrasound and infrasound -- 7.2 Sound as a tool -- Sound navigation and ranging (SONAR) -- Ultrasound in nature -- Ultrasound in medicine -- 7.3 The superposition of sound waves -- Standing waves -- 7.4 Sound intensity -- Real and perceived differences in the intensity of sound -- Quantifying perception -- Intensity level (loudness) -- Example - crying babies -- The 'annoyance factor' -- 7.5 Other sensations -- Tone quality -- Propagation of sound in open and confined spaces -- 7.6 Strings and pipes in music -- String instruments -- Wind instruments -- 7.7 The Doppler effect -- A moving observer -- A moving source -- Moving away from a source at almost the speed of sound -- Shock waves -- Shock waves and light -- A historical interlude: The sound barrier -- Chapter 8 Light as a Wave -- 8.1 Light as a wave -- The mystery of waves in nothing -- 8.2 Wave properties which do not make reference to a medium -- Superposition -- Huygens' principle -- Huygens' principle and refraction -- Diffraction -- Huygens' principle and diffraction -- 8.3 Specifically light -- Diffraction of light -- The experiment with light -- Other apertures -- The curious case of the opaque disc -- 8.4 Is there a limit to what we can distinguish? -- Images may overlap -- The Rayleigh criterion.

8.5 Other electromagnetic waves -- Message from the stars -- Other windows on the universe -- 8.6 Light from two sources -- Young's experiment -- 8.7 Thin films -- Thin film interference -- Non-reflective coatings -- 8.8 Diffraction gratings -- Practical diffraction gratings -- 8.9 Other 'lights' -- X-ray diffraction -- Electron diffraction -- 8.10 Coherence -- The question of phase -- 8.11 Polarization -- Polarization of electromagnetic waves -- What happens to light as it passes through a polaroid? -- Polarization by reflection -- A historical interlude: Thomas Young (1773-1829) -- Chapter 9 Making Images -- 9.1 Creating images -- Photography -- History of the photograph -- Kodak camera -- Colour photography -- Digital photography -- Nuclear photographic emulsion -- Interpretation of photographic images -- 9.2 Holography -- The inventor -- The principle -- Making a hologram -- Why does a holographic image look so real? -- Applications of holography -- Chapter 10 There Was Electricity, There Was Magnetism, and Then There Was Light -- 10.1 The mystery of 'action at a distance' -- The gravitational force -- The electrostatic force -- Coulomb's law -- A crucial difference -- 10.2 'Fields of force' -- Vector fields -- A picture to represent a physical law -- Gauss's theorem -- The energy in an electric field -- 10.3 Magnetism -- Magnetic materials -- 10.4 Electrodynamics -- Electric currents -- Ampère's discovery -- Oersted's discovery -- Ampère's law -- Summary -- The effect of a magnetic field on an electric charge -- Definition of electrical units -- Electromagnetism -- The interaction between moving charges -- 10.5 Getting electric charges to move with the help of magnetism -- Faraday's discovery -- Faraday's law of electromagnetic induction -- 10.6 Maxwell's synthesis -- Putting facts together -- An important extension to Ampère's law.

The four laws.