Ray Optics

Ray optics is the branch of optics that represents light as a ray: a straight line showing only the direction light travels in, not its intensity or colour. Because a ray of light travels in a straight line in a uniform medium and bends only on meeting another medium or an obstacle, geometric constructions using straight-line rays are enough to work out how mirrors, lenses and prisms form images, without needing to track the wave nature of light at all. A bundle of many such rays travelling together is called a beam of light. This ray picture is what the phenomena of reflection, refraction, dispersion and scattering are all explained thr …