Spherical Lens Aberration
Spherical Lens Aberration
This Demonstration studies the refraction of a light beam passing through a spherical lens. Drag the black rectangle in the top graphic to show the focal region magnified in the lower graphic. With high magnification, you can see that the beams do not converge exactly to a point (the lens focus) because of spherical aberration. Likewise, you can observe chromatic aberration by adding additional colors to the light beam. You can vary the input light beam and control the rectangular zoom region and the scaling. You can always return to the initial settings using the reset button.