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geometrical optics
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model of optics describing light as geometric rays
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- branch of physics
- Part of
- optics
- Image
- Lens3b.svg
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- Commons category
- Geometric optics
- topic's main category
- Category:Geometrical optics
- Stack Exchange tag
- physics.stackexchange.com/tags/geometric-optics
via Wikidata · CC0
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Encyclopedic overview
Geometrical optics, or ray optics, is a model of optics that describes light propagation in terms of rays. The ray in geometrical optics is an abstraction useful for approximating the paths along which light propagates under certain circumstances.
The simplifying assumptions of geometrical optics include that light rays:
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “geometrical optics” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.