![]() The earliest known lenses, made from polished crystal, often quartz, date from as early as 2000 BC from Crete (Archaeological Museum of Heraclion, Greece). Optics began with the development of lenses by the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians. Practical applications of optics are found in a variety of technologies and everyday objects, including mirrors, lenses, telescopes, microscopes, lasers, and fibre optics. Optical science is relevant to and studied in many related disciplines including astronomy, various engineering fields, photography, and medicine (particularly ophthalmology and optometry, in which it is called physiological optics). Quantum optics deals with the application of quantum mechanics to optical systems. When considering light's particle-like properties, the light is modelled as a collection of particles called " photons". Explanation of these effects requires quantum mechanics. Some phenomena depend on the fact that light has both wave-like and particle-like properties. Progress in electromagnetic theory in the 19th century led to the discovery that light waves were in fact electromagnetic radiation. Historically, the ray-based model of light was developed first, followed by the wave model of light. ![]() Physical optics is a more comprehensive model of light, which includes wave effects such as diffraction and interference that cannot be accounted for in geometric optics. The most common of these, geometric optics, treats light as a collection of rays that travel in straight lines and bend when they pass through or reflect from surfaces. Practical optics is usually done using simplified models. Complete electromagnetic descriptions of light are, however, often difficult to apply in practice. Most optical phenomena can be accounted for by using the classical electromagnetic description of light. Because light is an electromagnetic wave, other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays, microwaves, and radio waves exhibit similar properties. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light. Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics includes study of dispersion of light.
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