Few would dispute the verdict of James D. Forbes, an editor of the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica: " His scientific glory is different in kind from that of Young and Fresnel ; but the discoverer of the law of polarization of biaxial crystals, of optical mineralogy, and of double refraction by compression, will always occupy a foremost rank in the intellectual history of the age.

It is used in the sugar industry to measure syrup concentration, in optics to manipulate polarization, in chemistry to characterize substances in solution, and in optical mineralogy to help identify certain minerals in thin sections.

See optical mineralogy for more details.

A complex diagenetic history can be studied by optical mineralogy, using a petrographic microscope.

In geology, mineralogy and materials science, a scanning electron microscope with specialized optical detectors, or an optical cathodoluminescence microscope, is used to examine internal structures of semiconductors, rocks, ceramics, glass, etc.

His spheres of science were natural science, chemistry, physics, mineralogy, history, art, philology, optical devices and others.

Petrology utilizes the classical fields of mineralogy, petrography, optical mineralogy, and chemical analyses to describe the composition and texture of rocks.

* Bird's eye extinction, in optical mineralogy

* Extinction ( optical mineralogy )

The detailed analysis of minerals by optical mineralogy in thin section and the micro-texture and structure are critical to understanding the origin of the rock.

As determined by detailed analysis of the fine-grained rock using optical mineralogy, X-ray crystallography, and electron microprobe, the boulders consist of mud, fine silt and clay, cemented by calcite.

* Optical relief, the apparent difference in the height of materials in optical mineralogy with differing refractive indexes

* Schiller, an optical property of certain stones such as labradorite and moonstone ; see Lustre ( mineralogy )

* ABCD matrix analysis, a type of ray tracing technique used in the design of some optical systems

Important tools of real time analysis are the measurement of pH and analysis of optical absorption ( color ) and emission spectra.

From pictures on the wall to movies to television to video games to computers, each successive generation has been exposed to richer optical displays than the one before and may have become more adept at visual analysis.

A petrographic microscope, which is a optical microscope fitted with cross-Polarizer | polarizing lenses, a conoscopy | conoscopic lens, and compensators ( plates of anisotropic materials ; gypsum plates and quartz wedges are common ), for crystallographic analysis.

In physics and engineering it is used for analysis of linear time-invariant systems such as electrical circuits, harmonic oscillators, optical devices, and mechanical systems.

Much current research ( in the early 21st century ) on optical microscope techniques is focused on development of superresolution analysis of fluorescently labeled samples.

When new minerals are discovered, a standard procedure of scientific analysis is followed, including measures to identify a mineral's formula, its crystallographic data, its optical data, as well as the general physical attributes determined and listed.

The complex beam parameter plays a key role in the analysis of gaussian beam propagation, and especially in the analysis of optical resonator cavities using ray transfer matrices.

The approximation holds when the numerical aperture is small, but it turns out that for well-corrected optical systems such as camera lenses, a more detailed analysis shows that is almost exactly equal to even at large numerical apertures.

Typically, the theory and applications of emission, absorption, scattering of electromagnetic radiation ( light ) from excited atoms and molecules, analysis of spectroscopy, generation of lasers and masers, and the optical properties of matter in general, fall into these catergories.

One of the contrasts between the two men was that Newton was primarily a pioneer in mathematical analysis and its applications as well as optical experimentation, while Hooke was a creative experimenter of such great range, that it is not surprising to find that he left some of his ideas, such as those about gravitation, undeveloped.

The fact that optical powers are approximately additive enables an eye care professional to prescribe corrective lenses as a simple correction to the eye's optical power, rather than doing a detailed analysis of the entire optical system ( the eye and the lens ).

Almost immediately it was realized that the optical performance was not as expected ; analysis of the flawed images showed that the primary mirror had been ground to the wrong shape, resulting in spherical aberration.

All the characteristic temperatures associated to phases transformation, glass transitions and melting points, occurring during a sinterisation cycle of a particular ceramics formulation ( i. e., tails and frits ) can be easily obtained by observing the expansion-temperature curves during optical dilatometer thermal analysis.

Besides optical testing, applications of lateral shearing interferometry have included thin film analysis, refractive index measurement, collimation testing, and adaptive optics.

Ray transfer matrix analysis ( also known as ABCD matrix analysis ) is a type of ray tracing technique used in the design of some optical systems, particularly lasers.

** blood analysis devices used by clinical medical laboratories, such as flow cytometers, utilize photomultipliers to determine the relative concentration of various components in blood samples, in combination with optical filters and incandescent lamps.

Since the 1960s, Zernike's circle polynomials are widely used in optical design, optical metrology and image analysis.

* Thinfilm – Web interface for calculating optical properties of thin films and multilayer materials.

A lump of hafnium which has been oxidized on one side and exhibits Thin-film optics | thin film optical effects.

Photolithography ( also termed " optical lithography " or " UV lithography ") is a process used in microfabrication to selectively remove parts of a thin film or the bulk of a substrate.

White gold is often plated with a thin rhodium layer to improve its optical impression while sterling silver is often rhodium plated for tarnish resistance.

Because of the remarkable hardness of sapphires, 9 in Mohs Scale, ( and of aluminium oxide in general ), sapphires are used in some non-ornamental applications, including infrared optical components, such as in scientific instruments ; high-durability windows ; wristwatch crystals and movement bearings ; and very thin electronic wafers, which are used as the insulating substrates of very special-purpose solid-state electronics ( most of which are integrated circuits ).

It has excellent optical transparency in the range 0. 35 – 12 µm, and its radiation is primarily due to alpha particles, which can be easily stopped by a thin cover layer of another material.

Consequently, the thin optical surface layer could be quite different from the regolith underneath, and not representative of the bulk composition of the body.

Dual polarisation interferometry is also used to measure the complex refractive index for very thin films at optical frequencies.

Generally, in the vertical direction, the light is contained in a very thin layer, and the structure supports only a single optical mode in the direction perpendicular to the layers.

Connected to the B6500 was a laser optical recording medium, a write-once system that stored up to 1 Tbit on a plastic disk covered with a thin metal film.

* Charles M. Falco, American experimental physicist and an expert on the magnetic and optical properties of thin film materials.

* Pellicle mirror, a thin plastic membrane which may be used as a beam splitter or protective cover in optical systems

Indium tin oxide is one of the most widely used transparent conducting oxides because of its two chief properties, its electrical conductivity and optical transparency, as well as the ease with which it can be deposited as a thin film.

The optical channel is made as thin as possible for a desired breakdown voltage.

An optical coating is one or more thin layers of material deposited on an optical component such as a lens or mirror, which alters the way in which the optic reflects and transmits light.

The simplest optical coatings are thin layers of metals, such as aluminium, which are deposited on glass substrates to make mirror surfaces, a process known as silvering.

These are constructed from thin layers of materials such as magnesium fluoride, calcium fluoride, and various metal oxides, which are deposited onto the optical substrate.

Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching ( FRAP ) denotes an optical technique capable of quantifying the two dimensional lateral diffusion of a molecularly thin film containing fluorescently labeled probes, or to examine single cells.

Alternately, dichroic filters ( also called " reflective " or " thin film " or " interference " filters ) can be made by coating a glass substrate with a series of optical coatings.

Therefore, the optical quality of the telescope is ensured by an active optics system performing real-time corrections of the optical components and compensating, in particular, for the deformations of the primary mirror, which is too thin to be completely rigid.