Simulation and Implementation of Typical Optical Path Adjustments Involved in an Optical Virtual Lab

To avoid the limits of traditional optical real lab on the opening hours,space and equipments,an object-oriented approach was applied to the modeling of virtual equipments and the simulation of various experimental scenes and status were realized through developing of event driven applications based on C# language in Visual Studio 2005.Real-time interactive virtual adjustments of optical paths which include adjusting the laser beam to be parallel to the work platform,adjusting the chief ray of the laser beam to go through the center of the lens optical surface,adjusting the pinhole to position in the focus of the extender lens,adjusting the collimating lens based on shearing interferometry to get collimated laser beam,adjusting the grating in spectrometer to locate in the plane perpendicular to the optical axis and the grating line to be parallel to the slit,could be simulated through operations of the mouse and keyboard.This WYSIWYG way of virtual experiment needs no real experimental equipment support,can realize concept of if users can't come to the lab…,the lab without walls will come to users!,is helpful to enhance perceptual knowledge and deepen the understanding of the optical basic theory.