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Caustic Calculations
Author

Adrian Mariano
Organization: The Geometry Center, University of Minnesota
Old MathSource #

0205-131
Revision date

1993-03-01
Description

If light is shined from a point source onto a curved mirror, it focuses on a curve called the caustic. The orthotomic is an intermediate curve used to obtain the caustic. If gamma is a parametrized curve, then the orthotomic of gamma relative to the point S is given by (2((gamma - S) . N ) N) and the caustic of gamma for the light source at S is the evolute of the orthotomic.

Note: The package Caustic.m requires another Mathematica package, ParallelCurves.m, in order to execute properly. ParallelCurves.m is available as part of item 1903.
Subject

*Science > Physics > Optics
Keywords

Applied Math, Physics, Optics, Caustic, Orthotomic, curve, evolute, geometry
Related items

*Parallel Curves, Surfaces, and Evolutes   [in MathSource: Packages and Programs]
Downloads Download Wolfram CDF Player

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README-2.txt (181 B) - Additional package requirement notes
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README.txt (3.1 KB) - Author's notes and documentation
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Caustic.m (10.5 KB) - Mathematica package

Files specific to Mathematica 2.2 version:
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Caustic.m (10.2 KB) - Mathematica package