Physics in Pictures by Topic
Light & Optics
Tiny Drops Create Rings of Color
A rainbow isn't the only amazing thing that can happen when light bounces around inside water droplets!
What Color is this Bird?
The swallow tanager gets its brilliant blue and turquoise hues by harnessing the wavelike properties of light.
Nuclear Mysteries: the Rope Trick Effect
Developing and testing the most destructive weapons in history was a process fraught with danger—and discovery.
Dispersion Reveals Coffee at the End of the Rainbow
Dispersion through a glass splits light into its component colors.
The "Sunset Egg": Tyndall Scattering
The Tyndall Effect is responsible for the strange optical properties of this physics toy.
Diffraction Through a Spiderweb
Dew on a spiderweb's strands splits sunlight into a prismatic rainbow of colors.
Perihelion and Eccentricity
Learn about the Earth's farthest point from the sun with a lesson in eccentricity
Virus Microscopy
An atomic force microscopy (AFM) scan reveals several hundred tobacco mosaic virus particles.
Dark Energy Camera
A 570-megapixel camera attached to a telescope will help scientists uncover the mysteries of dark energy.
Optical Resonators
Researchers hope to combine high quality optics and mechanical systems integrated into an extremely compact package.
Rayleigh Scattering Sunsets
What causes the orange hue in a sunset? Why is the sky blue? Rayleigh scattering can explains these natural wonders, leaving onlookers amazed.
Crystal Ball
This ball is cannot tell you your future and it doesn’t drop to signal the beginning of a new year. No, this ball illustrates the physics concept of refraction.
Topographic Moon Map
This is the highest resolution topographic map of the moon to date taken from information gathered by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
Lighting Up Wall Street
High frequency trading computers can help make investors millions, but where in the world would be the best place for these computers to be located? Physics could help explain how to make your millions.
Solar Color Conversion
Molecules that convert light from one color to another could improve the efficiency of solar cells, provided researchers can find better ways to handle them.
Crystal Ions in Space
An ion trap allows physicists to capture atoms and hold them in crystal–like configurations in free space.
Hollow Atoms
Physicists have removed the inner electrons from neon with a high energy X-ray laser, leaving behind a hollow atom shell.
Light Magic
While running a series of Monochromatic UV germicidal range finding experiments, Barry Ressler created a series of images that Pink Floyd would be proud of.
Happy Groundhog's Day
Will the groundhog see his shadow and promise 6 more weeks of winter? More importantly, what is a shadow and where in this folklore is the science?
Happy New Year! Laserfest Takes Over Times Square
When the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve, 2010, it stood for more than the closing of a decade. It marked the end of Laserfest(www.laserfest.org), celebrating the 50th anniversary of the invention of the laser. In this picture, Laserfest says thank you and goodbye in Times Square
Shoot the Moon!
Lasers are used to track satellites. At the Goddard Space Flight Center lasers are used to track the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which is collecting data as it orbits the Moon.
It’s Raining Gamma Rays
If you happen to step outside into a thunderstorm, I bet the last thing you are concerned about is getting hit by gamma rays. A team of scientists has been using satellite data to find out where gamma ray pulses are coming from with a great deal of accuracy in order to clarify if these pulses are related to lightening.
Gamma Ray All-Sky Map
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is our high energy eye in orbit keeping a look out for big events in the universe and creating an extensive detailed map in the process. A high energy map of our universe reveals many interesting objects such as pulsars, super-massive black holes and possibly clues to its beginning.
Free Floating Plasma Orb or Squid Ghost
Ghost of discharged capacitor found haunting a glass of water! What could be more scary than that? Try a hot ball of electric plasma.
Laser-Plasma Creates Electro-Optic Shocks
High power laser pulses create shock-waves and bubbles in plasma.
Magnetic Properties of Thin Films
This spectroscopic image shows what are called microwave-frequency magnetic resonances of an array of parallel, metallic thin film nanowire "stripes". The peak in the center reflects resonances occurring at the stripe edges. The strong horizontal bar of violet, black, and white, is due to resonances in the body of the stripes.
LaserFest Photons
Photons are the particles that make up light. Who knew that they were also soft and cuddly? Welcome to LaserFest 2010!
Relativity Train
This train has endured space and time to teach physics to those wandering through the Bolivian desert.
Crystal Clear
When an all-electron Wigner crystal (top) is squeezed too tightly, the electron wave functions begin to overlap (middle), and then create a quantum liquid (bottom).
The Sharpest Focus
A team of researchers has announced a new technique that allows light to be focused to a smaller spot than ever before.
Random Acts of Light
Somewhere between a light bulb and a laser is an unusual and sometimes puzzling type of light source called a random laser.
Tracking Traveling Excitons
Researchers have tracked their first exciton. A team of researchers recently reported that they imaged the wave-like motion of the particle, which is essential to the operation of lasers in CD players and grocery scanners.
Structures of the Early Universe
Enormous structures in the early universe which are invisible to the unaided eye become apparent when observed using a telescope sensitive to mm-wave light.
The Little Chill
Some lasers can burn through solids, but others, shined on the right materials, have a chilling effect.
T-ray Vision
X-rays may be as familiar as your local dentist's office or airport security checkpoint, but it's unlikely that you've ever encountered a powerful T-ray, a beam of terahertz radiation.
Turning Circles
Quantum communication schemes using light normally rely on the two types of photon polarization to encode information a bit at a time.
Optical Corral
If you want to keep a horse confined, put it in a corral. Now, it appears the same thing can be done with light.
Veins of Gold
Researchers dream of building crystals from the ground up to achieve tight control of their periodic structure.
Photonic Phocus
Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute today unveiled the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever achieved by humankind.
Ingenious Algae
Many of the oceans' algae have evolved natural "sunscreens" as protection from the sun's ultraviolet rays.
The Whole Picture
Biologists dream of a point-and-shoot camera that can reveal details smaller than a wavelength of light in living cells.
Good Vibrations
Born of the marriage of two cutting edge techniques, a new method can image bundles of DNA strands by sensing vibrations within the molecules.
Cold Atoms
This year's physics Nobel Prize went to three researchers who were the first to observe and study the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), a new phase of matter.
'Hole' Fiber Fights Cancer
A holey fiber may be able to plug the "holes" in the list of laser colors is affordable to most scientists.
Blinding Light
Light slows down when it enters a medium such as glass or water, and its new speed depends on the material.
Goldilocks Proteins
Milky-white cataracts, the world's leading cause of blindness, can occur when proteins in the lens of the eye aggregate, or collect, forming clumps.
