Dale W. Olson 
Professor of Physics
e-mail: dale.olson@uni.edu
From 1987 through 2000, a main theme of Olson's research, aided by undergraduate physics majors, was the use of laser light scattering combined with holography as a way of doing surface roughness measurement. Work has also been done on the closely related problem of using holograms to perform character recognition, for example, finding a particular fingerprint in a holographic library of fingerprints. A second research theme has been the formation of holograms that can server as optical elements, for example as the objective lens of a telescope, or for rapid data storage and retrieval. The effect of hologram thickness on amount of data (number of images) that can be stored is one main issue. A second issue is the color selectivity as it depends on hologram thickness and recording geometry. Color display holograms are another related application. A third theme is educational applications of direct-beam transmission holography. An article by Olson on this subject is included as one of two holography-related articles in a collection of scientific papers on the subject of teaching light and color, published by the American Association of Physics Teachers in 2001.
Recent Publications
Eric Shields and D. W. Olson, "Holographic measurement of a test surface: FFT yields surface spatial frequencies," Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Iowa Space Grant Conference (University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA, 1995).
F. Behroozi and D.W. Olson, "Colorful demos with a long-lasting soap bubble," Am. J. Phys. 62, 856 (1994). |
