Stirring Up a Passion for Photonics

by Lynn Savage

It rather stands out among the shiny high-tech devices strung along the aisles at the BiOS trade exhibition — a simple pine valise propped open at one of the tables belonging to Omega Optical.

Rough-hewn by comparison with the colorful, glossy filters and other optical components the company has brought to showcase, the box reminds passersby of the Vermont countryside outside the windows of Omega’s Brattleboro headquarters. A glance inside, though, quickly shows that there’s a tale to tell: Poking out at all angles is an assortment of light sources, meters, optical mounts and filters, and instructions on how to use them all.

The wooden case holds a fully realized photonics exploration kit, designed to help science educators teach students about the way light is created, manipulated and put to work for a variety of tasks, from medicine to solar power. The company developed the kit to provide basic training that kids might not be exposed to, even as optical engineers and photonics researchers are becoming more in demand.

The kit provides up to a dozen “laboratories” that highlight traditional optical topics such as absorption, reflection, refraction and polarization. As lessons progress, the kit also supplies the equipment and instructions to study fiber optics, optical communication, wave-particle duality and other more complex topics.

The full kit costs about $1500; a partial kit with six labs is available for $900. In addition to the storage chest, the kit includes:

six each of nine different optical interference filters
six each of laser diode, LED, fluorescence, incandescence and atomic emission light sources
six digital multimeters
six pieces of mounting hardware
license to reproduce 12 laboratory lesson plans
instructor plans with support notes
charts displaying the electromagnetic spectrum

Lynn Savage
lynn.savage@photonics.com