KORAKU is an interactive educational app that visualizes how light behaves in real time. Bend rays with lenses and mirrors, overlap light as a wave, and explore color and photons to connect the equations with what you see.
Developer: Fuji Bit Inc.
KORAKU is the optics edition of the "-raku" physics simulation series. It turns the optics of school and university physics into moving pictures, not just formulas.
12 simulations in 3 categories:
- Rays & Images
- Lens: Trace rays through convex and concave lenses. Change the focal length, object distance and height to see the image switch between real and virtual, inverted and upright. Explore 1/f = 1/a + 1/b.
- Mirror: Switch between concave and convex mirrors. Move the radius R and object distance a to see how the image changes around the focal point F and center of curvature C, and why a virtual image appears behind the mirror.
- Eye & Glasses (new): See the cornea and lens focus an image on the retina. Choose a normal, nearsighted or farsighted eye and change the viewing distance, glasses power (diopters) and accommodation to see where the image forms and how blurry it looks. One tap sets matching glasses.
- Prism: Watch white light split into a spectrum. Change the apex angle, angle of incidence and refractive index to see dispersion bend each color differently, with the deviation and minimum deviation.
- Optical fiber: See light travel by total internal reflection. Change the launch angle and refractive indices to explore the critical angle, numerical aperture (NA) and when light leaks into the cladding.
- Light as a Wave
- Diffraction grating: Change the number of slits, spacing and wavelength to find the bright lines at d sin(theta) = m lambda, and watch them sharpen as slits are added.
- Thin film: Recreate the colors of soap bubbles and oil films. Change the thickness, refractive index and angle to shift the bright and dark wavelengths.
- Polarization: Rotate a polarizer and an analyzer to see Malus's law, I = I0 cos^2(theta): brightest at 0 and 180 degrees, blocked at 90.
- Color & the Nature of Light
- Color mixing: Compare additive mixing of light (RGB) with subtractive mixing of paint (CMY) using three sliders.
- Rainbow: Follow sunlight as it refracts into a raindrop, reflects inside and refracts out. See why the primary bow appears about 42 degrees from the antisolar point, the secondary about 51 degrees, with the colors reversed.
- Blue Sky & Sunset (new): See sunlight scattered in the atmosphere. Switch between Rayleigh scattering (proportional to 1/lambda^4) and Mie scattering (cloud droplets, haze), and change the sun altitude and air density. As the air mass grows, the sky and sun turn from daytime blue to sunset colors.
- Photoelectric effect: Shine light on a metal and watch electrons fly out. Change the frequency, intensity and work function to explore E = hf, Kmax = hf - W and the threshold frequency f0, with the visible and UV bands marked.
Features:
- Clean, modern design (dark and light themes)
- Home screen organized by category
- Tips and a play button in the control panel
- Parameter sliders with results that update in real time
- Legends and labels for every symbol and colored ray on screen
- An explanation sheet with formulas for every simulation
- In landscape, the canvas and control panel are shown side by side
- Supports larger text sizes
- VoiceOver reads out each screen's result (real or virtual image, total internal reflection, and more)
- 73 languages including English and Japanese, following your device language
- No sign-in: start exploring right away
Price:
- Free
- In-app purchases: none
- Subscriptions: none
- Ads: a banner ad by Pangle at the bottom of the screen
The "-raku" educational app series:
- SUUGAKU - Mathematics
- BUTURAKU - Mechanics
- DENRAKU - Electromagnetism
- HARAKU - Waves
- KORAKU - Optics
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