Demonstration for Additive Colors by Defocus Blur

Wenqing Sun, and Jun Wang

Citation: The Physics Teacher 57, 498 (2019); doi: 10.1119/1.5126836

View online: https://doi.org/10.1119/1.5126836
View Table of Contents: https://aapt.scitation.org/toc/pte/57/7
Published by the American Association of Physics Teachers

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Demonstration for Additive Colors by
Defocus Blur
Wenqing Sun and Jun Wang, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Suzhou, PR China

A
dditive colors are interesting to young students. In accurate PSF. The Gaussian PSF is given by
this paper, we show a convenient and straightforward
method to demonstrate this phenomenon by projec- , (4)
tor. It produces defocus blur and reduces imaging quality for
color mixing. We believe this demonstration experiment can where x and y are the coordinates on the image plane, and
be performed in most classrooms. is the spread parameter, which is proportional to the blurry
circle diameter d , i.e.,
Principle = kd for k > 0. (5)
In the past, some articles have discussed teaching methods
for color addition and subtraction, such as using LEDs of dif- For simplicity, let the calibration parameter k be the equal
ferent colors.1-3 Certain color mixers have already been made of 1. The focused and diffused images based on the Gaussian
and used in practice for students.4-5 Recently, Arduino has PSF are also depicted in Fig.1.
also been used to control LEDs for color mixing.6 In addition,
partially covered lenses,7 smartphone apps8 or spectropho-
tometers, and others are also used.9-10
In this section, a simple imaging model consisting of a thin
lens and an image plane is used to derive some fundamental
characteristics of focusing based on geometric optics in a
projection system. As illustrated in Fig.1, a single convex lens
with focal length f is considered. Three colored dots (pink,
cyan, and yellow) are placed at the object plane. In the projec-
tor’s optical system, the object plane is the display chip, and
the image plane is the screen. According to the paraxial optics, Fig. 1. Schematic for geometric optics model of defocus blur.
the relationship between a point on the display chip and the
corresponding focused position on the screen is given by the It takes three
well-known lens formula steps: 1. Draw
(1) a picture in the
computer and
display; 2. Project
where z is the distance of the object from the lens on one side, this image onto
and z is the distance of the image plane from the lens on the the screen; 3. Ad-
other side. In the projector system, z is fixed and z is variable. just the distance
Furthermore, the corresponding image point of A is modeled to produce defo-
as a blurry circle centered at A according to geometric optics. cus blur. In this
From Eq. (1) and the geometric relation demonstration, the
method of gener-
(2) ating defocus blur
is to move the pro-
the diameter d of the blurry circle can be written as jector to various Fig. 2. Picture drawn in MS Paint.
distances or switch
(3) the focus ring.

where D is the diameter of the lens and q is the distance from
the lens to the defocus plane. The accurate blur function,
which is called point spread function (PSF), should be given
by the incoherent imaging theory. Interested readers could
refer to chapter 6 of Ref. 11 for more detailed information
on this topic. However, it’s a little bit complicated for most
students. Fortunately, a Gaussian function is commonly used
in the field of image processing or machine vision instead of
Demonstration experiment
This blurring effect can help us to perform the color mix-
ing. In the classroom, it is convenient to use a projector for
this demonstration experiment. As shown in Fig. 2, we draw
a picture with six colored blocks with MS Paint. It contains
three blocks colored red, cyan, and yellow, and another three
with zebra stripes in different colors. The width of the lines
in the blocks is one pixel. However, it’s easy to scale the im-

498 THE PHYSICS TEACHER ◆ Vol. 57, October 2019 DOI: 10.1119/1.5126836
 age in software
according to the
blur extent of the
image for the best
demonstration
effect. A photo of
the projector used
in this experi-
ment is shown
in Fig. 3. The
model number is
Fig. 3. Photo of EPSON projector. EPSON EMP-61,
which offers the
manual focus function. Adjust the distance from the projector
to the screen, shooting the image on the focal plane as shown
in Fig. 4. Then alter the focus of the projector to produce a
blurry image, as shown in Fig. 5. We can see the color mixing
effect from this image. The blocks filled with different stripes Fig. 4. Image at the focus plane.
look like they are colored with orange, purple and green.

Conclusion
In this paper, we have shown a demonstration experiment
for color mixing. It is easy to perform in the classroom. We ex-
plained this phenomenon from the perspective of paraxial geo-
metric optics. We have already demonstrated this simple ex-
periment of color mixing to some students. It’s easy to perform
different combinations of color mixing by redrawing the im-
age. Furthermore, one also can change the light intensities in
color mixing by adjusting the brightness of colors or the width
of the stripes. Moreover, we hope to demonstrate the various
physical principles with more simple ways in the future.

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the reviewers for their helpful sugges-
tions, and this work was supported by Chinese High School
Physics Experiment Teaching Research Project (01-201601-
36, 2017JSJG474), Suzhou University of Science and Technol-
ogy Teaching Reform and Research Plan (2017JGMZ-06) and
National Natural Science Foundation of China (11503017).
References
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Fig. 5. Blurry image at the defocus plane.
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Wenqing Sun received his PhD in optical engineering from the Nanjing
University of Science and Technology. He is a lecturer in the Institute of
Mathematics and Physics at Suzhou University of Science and Technology.
sunwenqing@mail.usts.edu.cn
Jun Wang received his PhD in optical engineering from the Nanjing
University of Science and Technology. He is an associate professor in the
Institute of Mathematics and Physics, and is the director of the college
physics experimental center.

THE PHYSICS TEACHER ◆ Vol. 57, October 2019 499