Introduction
If you wanted to make a phone call to Europe or Asia in post World War II America, you might wait hours for an operator to set up a three-minute call and, if you got through, the connection was generally noisy with static. Clearly, it’s a completely different situation today. The world economy and politics move in minutes due largely to instantaneous communications made possible by tiny strands of very pure glass, about the size of a strand of human hair.Fiber optics power cell phones, pagers, fax machines, and most importantly, the Internet. The development of technologies in computing and communications over the past century and the convergence of these technologies in the past fifty years have made the fiber optics revolution possible. Today, they form the backbone of the global telecommunications system, having greatly increased the capacity of the telephone system and fueled the Internet.
Whether you’re a scientist, a doctor, a businessperson, or a politician, fiber optics are relevant to your life. My website will trace laser and fiber optic technologies from their beginning in quantum physics, explain how optical cables work using math and ray diagrams, and highlight the many practical applications of this exciting technology.
The Author
The author of this website is a junior at Brighton High School (www.bcsd.org). She created the site for her final project in AP Physics. Any comments or questions can be directed to Sarah@wetenhall.com.
Sources
http://www.beyonddiscovery.org/content/view.article.asp?a=438http://www.gw-solutions.com/classes/cweg119.asp
http://www.fiber-optics.info/fiber-history.htm
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question402.htm
http://www.lanshack.com/fiber-optic-tutorial-fiber.asp
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/fiber-optic.htm