Fourth Day


Today during the morning meeting all of the interns heard a description of imaging science. After the morning meeting, Tristan and I went down to out office where I looked up some information about focal length and aperture for review. Around 10am, we met up with Dmitry and went over more information about CCDs, including a lesson about bit count and ADU (analog- to-digital units). Afterwards, we went to the lab where I continued to learn how to use the camera and the computer program to fully focus an image and analyze the image.

Around 12:30pm, we left for lunch in the reading room. After lunch, I looked up articles and reports about birefringence and phase retardation of light waves. I found information about how birefringent materials work, including how they change the polarization of the light that passes through them by splitting a polarized light wave into a perpendicular and a parallel polarized wave. In the material, one of the waves will be slower than the other because they have different refraction indexes in the material. I still need to figure out how to find the phase retardation, which I will do tomorrow when Peter comes back. Also, tomorrow I will have to teach Peter how to use the camera and the info about birefringent materials, which will help me to understand both topics better.

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