Freshman Hands-On Instructional Laboratory in Modern AppliedOptics For Engineering Students at Cornell

获得实验室教学仪器使康奈尔大学工程物理项目提供给工程专业学生的应用光学教学质量有了很大的提高。该设备在现有的“激光及其在科学、技术和医学中的应用”实验课程的教学和实验内容方面取得了实质性的改进，并且已经相当成功，目前有25%的康奈尔大学工程专业学生参加了这门课程。我们的观点是，如果学生有使用这些工具的实践经验，并接触到生动地说明特定原理的实验，他们就更容易掌握现代光学中困难的概念。正在进行的实验证明了短光脉冲和低光水平检测、染料激光调谐、拉曼散射和光谱“指纹”。我们的目标背后的动机很简单；先进光学的广泛应用，特别是激光，在几乎所有的科学和工程学科中都很普遍，并且正在迅速发展。尽管有这样的事实和广泛发表的关于下个世纪即将到来的光子学革命的预测，但对于大量美国工程本科生在应用光学的基本原理和这些光学工具的实际使用方面的充分教育，通常很少受到关注。

Acquisition of laboratory instructional instrumentation allows a quantum improvement to be made in the quality of applied optics instruction offered to Cornell engineering students by the Engineering Physics program at Cornell. The equipment yeilds substantial and material improvement in the instructional and laboratory content of an existing, and already quite successful, laboratory course on "The Laser and Its Applications in Science, Technology and Medicine", a course which is currently taken by 25% of all Cornell engineering students. It is our contention that students more easily grasp difficult concepts in modern optics if they have hands-on experience with these tools and are exposed to experiments that vividly illustrate particular principles. Experiments are being developed that demonstrate short optical pulse and low light level detection, dye laser tuning, Raman scattering, and spectroscopic "finger printing".The motivation behind our objective is simple; the extensive use of advanced optics, and lasers in particular, is pervasive in almost all scientific and engineering disciplines and is rapidly growing. Despite this fact and the widely published forecasts of the coming photonics revolution in the next century, minimal attention is generally given to the adequate education of significant number of U.S. engineering undergraduates in the principles underlying applied optics, and in the practical use of these optical tools.