When people look into a mirror, they see an image of themselves behind the glass. That image results from light rays encountering the shiny surface and bouncing back, or reflecting, providing a ...

In my previous Photography Snapshot, I discussed the importance of light and how it bounces to create images. We discovered that the most primitive form of photography was the camera obscura, which ...

Light waves can be defined by three fundamental characteristics: their color (or wavelength), polarization, and direction. While it has long been possible to selectively filter light according to its ...

Introduction Can you imagine a bouncy ball that could bounce back and forth between two walls, infinitely—that is, forever? Wouldn't that be amazing? What if, instead of a ball, light was bouncing ...

If you've been paying attention to the launches of the new generation of game consoles, you've probably heard talk of ray tracing. Ray tracing is a rendering technique for photorealistic graphics by ...