What is optics the study of?

Answer 1

Optics is the study of light.

Answer 2

If we go along to the history of optics, Sir Issac Newton believed that the light consisted of tiny particles (corpuscles). This is called the corpuscular theory of light. However, in attempts to describe various properties of light, it seemed more logical to consider light as a type of waves.

One problem associated with the wave theory was the understanding of the medium of propagation of light. To overcome this difficulty, an invisible medium called etherwas introduced. The requirement for a medium disappeared when Maxwell introduced his electromagnetic theory. Throughout this theory, light is explained as a type of electromagnetic radiation.

The wave theory of light encountered another problem in explaining the photoelectric effect. To explain the experimental results associated with the photoelectric effect, it was necessary to consider light as a stream of tiny mass-less particles. Sir Albert Einstein, who introduced this theory in the year 1905, called these as photons.

With the introduction of photon theory, it became evident that light behaves like waves under some conditions and like particles under different conditions. This became known as dual nature of light. During the development of modern quantum theory, this concept of dual nature (also known as wave particle duality) was extended to matter particles as well.

The study of the physical nature of light is often known as Physical Optics while the study of understanding the paths of propagation of light and how the paths change when going through interfaces of various shapes is known as Geometrical Optics.