No abstract

No abstract

Color science is perhaps the most universally tangible discipline within the optical sciences for people of all ages. Excepting a small and relatively well-understood minority, we can see that the world around us consists of a multitude of colors; yet, describing the "what", "why", and "how" of these colors is not an easy task, especially without some sort of equally colorful visual aids. While static displays (e.g., poster boards, etc.) serve their purpose, there is a growing trend, aided by the recent permeation of small interactive devices into our society, for interactive and immersive learning. However, for the uninitiated, designing software and hardware for this purpose may not be within the purview of all optical scientists and engineers.Enter open source. Open source "anything" are those tools and designs --hardware or software --that are available and free to use, often without any restrictive licensing. Open source software may be familiar to some, but the open source hardware movement is relatively new. These are electronic circuit board designs that are provided for free and can be implemented in physical hardware by anyone. This movement has led to the availability of some relatively inexpensive, but quite capable, computing power for the creation of small devices. This paper will showcase the design and implementation of the software and hardware that was used to create an interactive demonstration kit for color. Its purpose is to introduce and demonstrate the concepts of color spectra, additive color, color rendering, and metamers.

No abstract

Through the ongoing educational outreach activities of the NES/OSA, we have been invited on several occasions to present optics workshops to students of many ages and backgrounds. With a nearly-overwhelming plethora of optics topics that could be presented, we have decided to develop a curriculum on color science that can be presented in a workshop format. Color science was chosen due to the wealth of examples of the application of color within a student's culture, society, technology, and experiences.The goal of the workshop is to teach basic color science by examining objects and events that the students can experience or interact with in their own lives. The curriculum can be scaled to match groups of different sizes and backgrounds as well as to fit within certain time constraints. Depending on logistics, a variety of hands-on demos can be presented, or the workshop can be fully tutorial-based. This curriculum has been presented several times and is constantly evolving based upon each experience.In this paper, we present the portions of the curriculum that have been developed to date. We discuss considerations for adding or removing sections to meet specific workshop constraints. We will also present the evolution of the curriculum from inception to its current state, highlighting the lessons learned from each presentation of the curriculum.