This project utilizes recent progress in educational techniques and computers to provide undergraduates with interactive access to a full range of laboratory optical technology, from the simplest to the latest high technology optics, while reducing cost and unifying the learning experience in physics and engineering. The need for national preeminence in the area of rapid and precise handling of optical information requires students who are well and consistently trained across the spectrum of optics in physics and engineering. The project is based in CUPLE (Comprehensive Unified Physics Learning Environment) program, which provides a base of computational and video techniques. It provides access to a broad range of optics technology in a consistent manner that enables the student to move in an interactive manner from familiar to less familiar material. This program is comprehensive, because it draws on innovative developments in classroom, laboratory, lecture demonstration, and computer based materials developed by a consortium of excellent educators and unified in that it presents a consistent user interface to students, lecturers, and experimentailsts across different applications and different media, such as laboratory instruments, data arrays, graphical displays, and video recordings. This approach can bring a larger number of undergraduate students into closer and more timely contact with laboratory experience in a flexible manner at significantly reduced cost as compared to conventional methods. The present project is developing a set of trial modules on modern optics combining instruction simulation, and experiments within the CUPLE environment.
