Assignment 2
Assignment 2 is to produce a images like
the ones below.It is due before
class on Friday, February 7. Please hand
in your PostScript files via email.
The first picture below shows the paths of ray coming from underwater
to the air above. The second shows the paths of rays of red
light reflecting inside a raindrop, and the one on the right
shows what happens if these same rays pass through.
Doing this will involve using the basic commands
discussed in the notes above, together with a small
collection of special commands designed for the task. They are
contained in the file lenses.inc, which you
should download onto your machine.
Then, at the beginning of your PostScript program you should
include the line (lenses.inc) run,
which will cause this file
to be included in your program
if your environment has been set up
satisfactorily. This may involve fooling
around with the options in your PostScript viewer.
For one thing, you should click off the option
SAFER in GSView.
The package of procedures
in lenses.inc includes commands
-
roots
[A B C] roots returns an array of 0, 1, or 2 roots
of the equation A x2 + Bx + C = 0, in order.
[1 -3 2] roots will leave [1 2]
on the stack.
Many of the routines described here return an array
of numbers. There are a number
of reasons for this.
In order to access the numbers inside,
you must give that array a name,
and then use get. For example,
/r [1 -3 2] roots def
r 0 get
defines r to be the array of roots and puts
the first on the stack.
-
reflection
n v reflection returns the reflection of the
unit vector
v with respect to the unit normal vector n.
In other words, you use this in the follwoing way: you
have calculated the unit normal vector at a point on
a surface (say with gradient and normalized,
described below). If v is a direction (unit length) vector,
n v will leave on the stack
the new direction of the reflected ray.
As in the discussion of roots above,
you'll want to give that new direction vector a name with def.
-
refraction
n v index refraction returns the refracted direction
as a unit vector [x y]. (See the discussions
of roots and reflection above, too).
-
vadd
u v vadd returns the vector sum of the 2D vectors u
and v. Thus
[1 1] [-1 1] vadd
leaves [0 2] on the stack.
-
asin
x asin returns the arc sin of x.
You can use this one even in drawing the first (and simplest) picture
above, in order to figure out exactly
what the minimum and maximum angles in
the cone of rays are.
-
vscale
v c vscale returns cv.
Thus
[1 2] -1 vscale
leaves [-1 -2] on the stack.
-
hit
[x y] [vx vy] [cx cy] R hit returns the point
where the ray P + tv = [x y] + t[vx vy]
hits the circle
with radius R and centre
[cx cy]. The vector [vx vy] is
the direction of the ray. This procedure
will return an empty array if the ray misses the circle.
Thus
/P1 [-5 0] [ 1 0] [0 0] 1 hit def
defines P1 to be [-1 0].
And
-
gradient
[cx cy] [x y] gradient returns the gradient vector at the point
[x y] for the
function (x-cx)2+(y-cy)2.
This is changed
from an earlier version which had three arguments.
-
normalized
[x y] normalized returns the normalized vector with length 1.
These two should be combined with reflection
and refraction. Thus
/P1 [-5 0.5] [1 0] [0 0] 1 hit def
/n [0 0] 1 P1 gradient normalized def
/v1 n [1 0] reflection def
finishes by letting v1 be the direction
of a ray reflected from the unit circle,
with centre at the origin, where the
horizontal ray from [-5 1/2] hits it.
PostScript is simple-minded but wordy.
-
vlength
[x y] vlength returns the vector length.
-
The package stores the indices of refraction of red and blue light
as red-index
and blue-index.
-
line-intersection
P v [A B C] line-intersection returns the point where the line through P
in the direction of v intersects the line
Ax+By+C=0. As an array of two numbers.
Notes on the package lenses.inc
A start:
Click on image to see the PostScript source.
In order to understand exactly what this program does,
you should read especially the section on the stack
in the notes.
In order to complete the drawing,
you have to figure out
what angle is the most extreme one visible from
above the pool, the one
that corresponds to a ray horizontal along the water
surface. Use the law of refraction to figure this
out with a calculator, say.
We'll talk about all of these things on Monday.
Then to begin on the other two figures.
This will require that you import
the file lenses.inc into your own file
and use the routines defined there.
Class on Wednesday (Jan. 29), Friday (Jan. 31), Monday (Feb. 3).
and Wednesday (Feb. 5)
will be at the usual time, but in the
Mathematics Computer Laboratory, Mathematics 202.
The assignment is due on Friday, February 7.
To work with PostScript on your own computer,
you will need to download GhostScript
and GhostView as mentioned above.
Also, you must toggle off the Safer option to run files.
As you work on these, you should ask yourself:
-
What is the angle of the cone in the image of rays
going up from inside water?
-
What is the maximum angle of deflection
of the rays reflecting inside the rain drop?
-
What is the x coordinate of the point where
most of the rays through the drop intersect?
Solutions to Assignment #2