Wave watching by proxy — looking at how waves focus light on the sea floor
What is it that we actually look at when we go wave watching? Water is pretty much clear (or at least it is in the spots where I like to…
Tag: optics
Rainbows in regnbyen Bergen
Yesterday when approaching Bergen airport, I saw something super cool: The lower half of a rainbow! Even though I grabbed my phone and snapped a picture in record time, I…
Observing waves differently
When we speak about “observing waves”, we usually mean looking at the water’s surface as an opaque surface that reflects the sky and where we see waves mainly due to…
Refraction of light in moving water — why stuff seems to be jumping around
I was waking along Kiel fjord one morning and noticed a stone “jump” on the ground as waves went over it (and actually, that observation was the motivation to dive…
Refraction of light in water — looking at a couple of examples
Looking at how light gets refracted when it enters water is always fascinating. There are a dozen blog posts on the topic on this blog alone, but let me talk…
Reflections on reflections
When we think about reflections in water, we usually think of calm lakes and trees on the shore opposite to us. Or clouds. Or at least that’s what I think…
The difference between secondary rainbows and double rainbows
More reflection or more rain? Ha, aren’t you enjoying talking about optics again? Sometimes you see two rainbows that both have red on the outside and blue on the inside.…
Sun dogs
Recently spotted: sun dogs, a special form of halo! Or rather sun dog (singular), since there was only one to be seen and not a second one at equal distance…
Rainbows and prisms
Lets go back and talk about one of my favorite non-oceanographic topics: Rainbows! When I had my rainbow phase about a year ago, my mom sent me the movie below, which shows what…
Refraction of light in water – sticks and lenses.
Deformation in the water surface focussing light. Talking about how a deformation in the surface leads to light being focussed in different ways here and here, another example came to…
Eddies – surface imprint and optical properties
You can see “shadows” of eddies on the ground! As everybody who has ever watched a bath tub drain knows – eddies do lead to a deformation of the water’s surface.…
Refraction of light in water – coins and lenses.
More on what water can do to light. Remember my fascination with dandelions? Just to remind you: Especially in combination with coins and water droplets, dandelions are a source of…
Refraction of light in water.
What water can do to light. In the last post, I showed you a couple of pictures of a vase filled with dandelions. Turns out this might not have been enough of…
