Virtual Remote Lab - Light Diffraction Simulator

Simulate light diffraction patterns from anywhere with an interactive Virtual Remote Lab experience!

Overview

The Virtual Remote Lab (VRL) is an interactive simulation tool for studying light diffraction patterns. Developed in 2019 with partner Kelson Reiss as a project for our SLU Madrid CS Software Engineering course, this virtual lab enables students to conduct diffraction experiments without the need for physical lab access.

Demo

Project Background

This project was created to accompany an optical physics course, providing a Java/JavaFX-powered virtual GUI for students to input various parameters and visualize the diffraction output dynamically. The development process involved learning and implementing basic optical physics principles, including the computation of intensity patterns and the identification of wavelength minima/maxima in diffraction profiles.

Features

• Interactive GUI for simulating diffraction through single, double, and circular slits.
• Real-time graphical representation of diffraction intensity patterns.
• Customizable parameters for slit type, light color, slit separation, width, and observation distance.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Download JDK 17 or later for your operating system. Make sure JAVA_HOME is properly set to the JDK installation directory.
• Download JavaFX SDK for your operating system and unzip to a desired location.

Installation and Running the Application

Linux / Mac

Navigate to the root directory of the project from the terminal and run the following commands to set the JavaFX path variable and compile:

export PATH_TO_FX=path/to/javafx-sdk/lib
javac --module-path $PATH_TO_FX --add-modules=javafx.controls,javafx.fxml -cp .:commons-math3-3.6.1.jar -d out $(find src -name "*.java")

Replace path/to/javafx-sdk/lib with the actual path to your JavaFX SDK's lib directory.

To run the project:

java --module-path $PATH_TO_FX --add-modules=javafx.controls,javafx.fxml -cp out:src:commons-math3-3.6.1.jar application.Main

Windows

Navigate to the root directory of the project from the Command Prompt and run the following commands to set the JavaFX path variable and compile:

set PATH_TO_FX=path	o\javafx-sdk\lib
dir /s /b src\*.java > sources.txt & javac --module-path %PATH_TO_FX% --add-modules=javafx.controls,javafx.fxml -cp .;commons-math3-3.6.1.jar -d out @sources.txt & del sources.txt

Replace path o\javafx-sdk\lib with the actual path to your JavaFX SDK's lib directory.

To run the project:

java --module-path %PATH_TO_FX% --add-modules=javafx.controls,javafx.fxml -cp out;src;commons-math3-3.6.1.jar application.Main

Note: The classpath separator in Windows is ; (semicolon), whereas in Linux/Mac it is : (colon).

Authors

• Nolan Murphy
• Kelson Reiss