 
On a Monday afternoon in late November, a dozen students are gathered around a laser setup, two reporting on their work, the rest listening. This is the small projects phase of the modern optics course the department revamped for Fall 2001. The College of Arts and Sciences provided nearly $100,000 in funding to upgrade equipment in the optics lab, providing an updated learning environment in a field whose practical applications provide the foundation of billion dollar industries.
Dr. Marianne Breinig teaches modern optics, a course comprising Web-based modules, in-class discussions, and a weekly three-hour laboratory. Ten modules cover topics ranging from a review of elementary optics through lasers and fiber optics. Laboratories offer students hands-on experience with reflection and refraction, laser beam expanders, and optical processors, to name just a few concepts. The lab requirement concludes with small projects, where students choose an experiment and spend two lab periods setting it up and taking and analyzing data. Then they demonstrate their projects to classmates.
Gerald Ragghianti, for example, constructed an interferometer with two beamsplitters, two mirrors and a target. This allowed him to do an experiment to measure either the index of refraction of a glass plate or the thickness of a glass plate.
"I encourage all of you to build one of these," he tells the class. "These are fun."
The small projects take advantage of major improvements in lab equipment. Dr. Jim Parks, director of undergraduate laboratories and associate head, explained that Dr. Breinig set up four complete workstations with optics kits for performing a multitude of experiments. In addition to optical hardware and components for standard experiments, other special equipment is now available for fiber optics and interferometry experiments.
Stephen Wilson, a senior, said he thought the final project was the best part of the course because it gives students "the chance to play around with the fiber optic kits" and explore ideas like mode scrambling and fiber attenuation.
"I think all in all it was a great lab," he said.
The student project write-ups are on the Web at http://electron9.phys.utk.edu/optics421/Laboratories.htm.
The hands-on learning environment provides students with experience in one of the most practical scientific fields. According to the National Research Council's 1998 report Harnessing Light: Optical Science and Engineering for the 21st Century, "every semiconductor chip mass produced in the world today is manufactured using optical lithography. Just making the equipment for this business is a $1 billion industry, and it ultimately enables a $200 billion electronics business."
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