to perfect a concept...
Taking a failed project from a previous quarter and stripping it down to its bare minimum...
the concept revealed :: Caustics.
Caustics can best be described as the envelope of light rays reflected or refracted by a curved surface or object, or the projection of that envelope of rays on another surface.
More elaborately... A caustic surface is the envelope of a family of light rays. It is essentially a concept of geometrical optics, but the region of a caustic displays interesting wave effects. The word "caustic" is from Latin, and implies burning, because the intensity of the light is increased near a caustic. However, the intensity is not increased enough actually to make burning a fact. A caustic is a boundary between regions in which the light intensity is nonzero and zero. A wave cannot be sharply cut off, as the phenomena near the boundary of the shadow of an obstacle show. On one side, we have an intensity decreasing rapidly to zero, and on the other a system of interference fringes typical of two coherent superimposed beams. This is clearly seen in the Fresnel diffraction pattern of a straight edge. However, in the case of a caustic there is no edge, but a natural termination of the light field. Inside the caustic, there are two wavefronts that interfere to produce the observed fringes.
Simple Caustics
Ocean Caustics
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