Rayleigh Criterion

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Rayleigh Criterion

Not.the.Surety

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While on a flight, I decided to video a glass of apple juice to see if movement over a distance has any effect on the glass.

Anyone can record this using any decent smartphone, no fancy Nikon Coolpix P1000 or P950 needed.

Visual clarity of the Toronto skyline when from relatively clear to completely obscured in 10 minutes.

Railroads show us how objects can disappear even though they are only 500 meters in the distance, this is due to diffraction caused by having a camera height of 2 centimeters (half the camera lens size) above the metal rail.

This is similar in dimensions to having a viewer height of 2 meters over a distance of 50,000 meters. Like looking across Lake Ontario from the south shore to the Toronto skyline.

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Created 7 months, 2 weeks ago.

9 videos

Category Science & Technology

It is sad that most people have near zero understanding of Physics.

• Diffraction limits resolution.

• For a circular aperture, lens, or mirror, the Rayleigh criterion states that two images are just resolvable when the center of the diffraction pattern of one is directly over the first minimum of the diffraction pattern of the other.

• This occurs for two point objects separated by the angle θ = 1.22 λ / D, where λ is the wavelength of light (or other electromagnetic radiation) and D is the diameter of the aperture, lens, mirror, etc. This equation also gives the angular spreading of a source of light having a diameter D.

From http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/Raylei.html
Average vision is 5 × 10⁻⁴ radians or 103.13 arcseconds or a ratio of 1:2000 [1 unit resolvable at 2000 units]