Interactive 3D visualization of optical phenomena

Each year at colleges and universities nationwide, some 10,000 students take a course on optics, typically through a physics department. The method of instruction has changed very little in the past 40 years, and many of the textbook illustrations have remained essentially the same during this time. In particular, the illustrations rely heavily on line drawings and 2D graphs. Certain key concepts in optics possess fundamentally 3D aspects, which instructors typically demonstrate in a classroom laboratory. Currently, several computer-assisted instructional modules support teaching optics by visualizing optical phenomena. We created interactive 3D graphical modules for visualizing optical phenomena by applying 3D visualization techniques to instructional courseware