OPTICAL PHENOMENON

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does optical phenomenon mean? 

• OPTICAL PHENOMENON (noun)
  The noun OPTICAL PHENOMENON has 1 sense:

1. a physical phenomenon related to or involving light

  Familiarity information: OPTICAL PHENOMENON used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• OPTICAL PHENOMENON (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A physical phenomenon related to or involving light

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural phenomena

Hypernyms ("optical phenomenon" is a kind of...):

physical phenomenon (a natural phenomenon involving the physical properties of matter and energy)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "optical phenomenon"):

aberration; distortion; optical aberration (an optical phenomenon resulting from the failure of a lens or mirror to produce a good image)

absorption band (a dark band in the spectrum of white light that has been transmitted through a substance that exhibits absorption at selective wavelengths)

diffraction (when light passes sharp edges or goes through narrow slits the rays are deflected and produce fringes of light and dark bands)

fringe; interference fringe (one of the light or dark bands produced by the interference and diffraction of light)

incidence (the striking of a light beam on a surface)

optical illusion (an optical phenomenon that results in a false or deceptive visual impression)

pleochroism (the phenomenon of different colors appearing when certain crystals are viewed from different directions)

polarisation; polarization (the phenomenon in which waves of light or other radiation are restricted in direction of vibration)

parallax (the apparent displacement of an object as seen from two different points that are not on a line with the object)

Tyndall effect (the phenomenon in which light is scattered by very small particles in its path; it makes a beam of light visible; the scattered light is mainly blue)

 Context examples 

Fluorescence is a luminescence (i.e., optical phenomenon) in cold bodies, in which a molecule absorbs a high-energy photon, and re-emits it as a lower-energy (longer-wavelength) photon.

(Fluorescence, NCI Thesaurus)