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(As I'm writing these I viewed previous posts about optics simulation)

me and some of my friends are working in iypt problems. one of the problem is named "thick lens" which says:

A bottle filled with a liquid can work as a lens. Arguably, such a bottle is dangerous if left on a table on a sunny day. Can one use such a ‘lens’ to scorch a surface?

As I'm going to simulate this I'm looking for a software that:

  • has different 3d shapes (for bottle) that can have different refraction indexes.
  • has different kind of light source
  • software gives energy and ray intensity charts on different parts of shape

  • the time I'm gonna work on problem us not going to be more than one week. So ease of us and learning matters

  • (not very important) not be very expensive

Qmechanic
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user2838619
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    Possible duplicates: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/38865/2451 , http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/6682/2451 and links therein. – Qmechanic Oct 31 '14 at 06:41

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Regarding to the question: `` Can one use such a ‘lens’ to scorch a surface?''

I'd put my money on the answer ``No, not for a reasonable time at least'', since the bottle (with or without a liquid) is a very poor lens, and it will take a lot of time to warm up the surface, let alone scorch it.

As for software, let's face it: open-source soft is amateurish to put it mildly (disclaimer: I use Debian GNU/Linux as a desktop), so I would not waste time on it. You need something like Zemax, and they have demo-versions.

Qmechanic is spot on with those links: software for ray tracing is plentiful, and there are free programs (but I'd stick to Zemax or OSLO).

You need to simulate basically two cylindrical surfaces and a light source.

Community
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virens
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  • thanks for your answer.actually one my friends said he used zemax 2003 and there was not cylinder on it.but about the question itself,what shape do you think can do it in reasonable time?for example,can a ball lens do it? – user2838619 Oct 31 '14 at 08:10
  • I don't use Zemax often - I'm a researcher and prefer to write my own code, but a quick googling got me to the zemax forum thread about modelling of cylindrical lens. Again, you need to know a fair amount of optics to actually get something useful from Zemax. As for your question about the shape that you can do - I'd start from a cylinder, because, well, that's how the section of a bottle looks like. And remember: a bottle is not a lens, by any stretch. It just re-arranges the lightrays, which (eventually) causes (weak) concentration of light. – virens Oct 31 '14 at 09:31