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Professor Authors Optics for Dummies to Bring Attention to Optics
October 3, 2011
While some professors might cringe at the thought of writing a
book called Optics for Dummies, Rose-Hulman Institute of
Technology's Galen Duree saw it as an opportunity to promote optics
by making it easy to understand.
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Spreading The News About Optics: Award-winning Rose-Hulman
Institute of Technology Physics and Optical Engineering Professor
Galen Duree has authored Optics for Dummies in hopes of attracting
more interest in optics and making the science of optics more
easily understood.
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"I didn't write it to burnish my academic credentials. I wanted
it to be an outreach for optics," explained the Duree, physics and
optical engineering professor and director of Rose-Hulman's Center
for Applied Optics Studies.
The book is part of Wiley Publishing's popular For Dummies
series of reference books. Since its inception with DOS for
Dummies in 1991, the instructional series has grown to include more
than 250 million books in print. The series' goal has always
been to cut through the technical jargon to present challenging
topics in an easy-to-understand, conversational style.
That's where Duree's technical expertise, award-winning teaching
skills and curiosity became a natural fit for the For Dummies
series.
"I was thinking that we really needed something for kids to
explain that optics is more than just eyeglasses and telescopes,"
he says. Meanwhile, Wiley Publishing had come to the same
conclusion. They approached Duree and asked if he'd be
interested in authoring a book examining optics.
Writing Optics for Dummies meant Duree had to consciously tailor
the text to conform to the type of conversational style for which
the For Dummies series is known. The down-to-earth physicist found
the process challenging in unexpected ways. "I never realized
that I wrote like an academic until I submitted the first
manuscript," he chuckles.
The book covers everything from the mathematical basics behind
optics to its use in military, medical and even entertainment
applications. "There are a lot of descriptions of how they
make 3D movies, but nobody understands them unless they have a PhD
in optics," said Duree, recipient of Rose-Hulman's Outstanding
Teacher Award in 2004. He is director of the college's
Ultrashort Pulse Laser Laboratory, a collaborative effort with
research at the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Crane, Ind.
By making the study of optics approachable, and relating it to
technology students are interested in, Duree hopes to pique the
curiosity of people who might not otherwise consider the science
behind 3D movies, missile defense or magnetic resonance
imaging.
Duree hopes that Optics for Dummies will present the
subject in a way that will enable more people to understand the
science, and inspire a new generation of students to pursue a
career in optics.