Thin Lenses Date Performed: April 1, 2011 Author: Nicole Celani, Thierno Bah and Javon Rabb

Purpose: The purpose of this weeks lab was to study thin optical lenses. The focal length of converging, diverging and combination of lenses will be determined as a part of this lab. An Optical lens is a piece of transparent material that allows light to travel through, refraction, and/or reflects light. Procedure: The procedure for this experiment can be found in the handout entitled Thin Lenses. Data Discussion: 1) Positive Lens (convex/convex) The focal length for the positive lens was 5.1 cm. This lens is a converging lens that brings all the parallel rays of light together at a point, the focus. All converging lenses are thicker in the middle then at the ends. 2) Negative Lens (concave/concave) The negative lens had no real image formed on the screen. The image was not formed on the screen because the rays of light form the image in front of the lens. All diverging lens are thicker at the ends then in the middle. Due to these properties there is not focal length to me measured. 3) Negative with positive lens The negative lens was combined with a positive lens. The negative was placed before the positive lens. The focal length for the previous positive lens was used to determine the focal length of the negative lens. The focal length of the negative lens was determined to me f= -10 cm.

4) Opposite arrangement of negative and positive When the previous situation was rearranged it was observed that the order of the lenses does not matter and the same calculations were observed. This proves optical versatility. 5) Strong Positive Lens This lens was conducted in the same way as the previous positive lens. However, the focal length of this lens was determined to be 4.9 cm. The focal length for this lens is smaller than the previous lens that was 5.09. This lens is stronger because the shorter the focal length the stronger the lens. 6) Stronger Positive Lens with negative Lens The strong positive lens was then used with the previous negative lens. This should have theoretically produced the same negative focal length. There was a 3.3% difference and this shows that it is close to the predicted outcome. It was also observed throughout this experiment that as the distance between the object and the lens increases the object between the image and the lens decreases. The shorter the focal point the later the image. This lab experiment was conducted to strengthen the understanding of optics throughout the class. Below are some photos taken throughout the class using the different lenses.

Positive Lens

Negative Lens