Wikipedia:WikiProject Optics

This is a wikiproject designed for the purpose of expanding, referencing and making more readable, the optics articles within Wikipedia. While optics falls under the scope of Wikiproject Physics, it's still an extremely expansive topic of great importance.

While optics can be a formula- and algebraically-heavy subject, it's always important to reference things to make sure that they are correct, and to allow us to make Wikipedia on the whole into a more credible source of information than it is. Let's not give those idiots at Encyclopædia Britannica a reason to try and badmouth us by neglecting to reference all of our work thoroughly.

Active Members

Name	Area	Comment?
User:JCraw [Founder?]	Neuroscientist; presumably optics from physics sub module? James S 16:48, 16 January 2007 (UTC)	Founder, according to the history
User:JSpudeman	Physics, physical chemistry, chemistry, some/little neuroscience	Nice to see an optics wikiproject
User:Graphite_Elbow	Physics, basically – Engineering background; readability-fixing	Ditto	Why does this page exist?

Readability

The most important thing about an encyclopedia article is that it does not discriminate against fields of endeavour, or against people with different intelligence or knowledge levels. This means that you need to add the information as it is in a book, or in an encyclopedic style, but you also need to make it easy for people to pick up the article and read it from beginning to end.

This doesn't mean that the language has to be "toned" or "dumbed" down, it just means that terms and other things need to be expanded or explained within the sentence to make it clear what the concept is – make the whole article explained within itself, rather than use 5 or 6 concepts a user has to then read fully before being able to understand the article. The concepts don't need to be super-explained, but explained within context. For example:

Avoid:

Refraction is an optical process in which the phase velocity of a particle or ray changes upon the impingement on a border between two media of differing densities.

Instead:

In the field of Optics, refraction is a phenomenon which occurs when a ray or beam of light impinges, or passes through, a border between two materials of different densities causing a change in the wavelength or phase velocity of a particle.

The latter is more readable, mainly because we assume that a user reading the page knows nothing about optics, but has some knowledge of waves and particulate matter.

Now, the golden rule.

Make sure you DEFINE KEY TERMS INITIALLY

It's important to define terms initially, because you must explain the main concepts within that particular part of the topic in order to continue the other paragraphs using the same terms without definitions.

For example:

Some paragraph

The wavelength of a photon propagating rectilinearly from a vacuum and impinging upon a border between two refractive media's direction...

This is all true, but it makes it difficult to pick up on what's going on if you don't know what some terms mean -- in this paragraph, the terms of "rectilinear", "impingement" and "propogation" within this context. So, let's see how we can fix it...

Some paragraph

When a photon passes through, or impinges, at 90 degrees perpendicular to the surface, it is travelling at rectilinear propagation; its angle does not change, and therefore its change....

Recap

1. Don't type paragraphs as if you're trying to teach someone a concept. This includes things like "imagine..." or "think about", or "consider".
2. Make sure you explain your terms and conditions before you explain a concept, or explain them within the context of the topic.
3. Reference all work you add in!