Optic Bench
Steer light to a target with mirrors, lenses and slits, aiming by the laws of reflection, image formation and interference.
5
levels3–12 min
a run, player-paced7
shelf budgetNo timer
player-paced, always
Optic Bench
Steer light to a target with mirrors, lenses and slits, aiming by the laws of reflection, image formation and interference.
An emitter, a target, obstacles and a shelf of priced optical elements. Place each element by typing its position and angle, then fire — the one commitment. The light goes where the optics sends it: a mirror turns it by twice the glancing angle, a lens forms its image where 1/f = 1/dₒ + 1/dᵢ says, and at the top tier the pattern from two slits, not the ray, must land.
Levels
5 levelsThe tag on each level says how it gets harder. Levels gate on ideas, not on each other — jump wherever it gets interesting.
What decides the outcome
The game never restates the science — it imports it. These are the model layers that do the deciding.
The law of reflection and single-mirror deviation (reflection.ts), the thin-element image equation with its real-is-positive sign convention (image-formation.ts, lenses.ts, mirrors.ts), and the two-slit screen intensity and fringe spacing (double-slit.ts). The game states no law of optics of its own; it does only the geometry of where a ray meets a segment.
Why it teaches
The author's own delete-the-science argument: remove this game's substrate and there is nothing left to choose.
Every placement is an optics computation: a mirror's angle is the bisector of the turn it must make, a lens position is a root of the lens equation, a mirror that forms only virtual images cannot light a sensor, and a slit plate's distance sets the fringe spacing λL/d. Without the substrate every angle and position is the same guess; with it, a miss is explained in the incidence angle, the image distance or the fringe order that caused it.
Accessibility
The contract's declarations, stated before you commit to a run.
Keyboard
Playable start to finish from the keyboard.
Screen reader
Every move is narrated — the narration is the state, not a description of a picture.
Motion
Reduced-motion: consequences render statically.
Audio
Silent — no sound, and nothing on screen moves on its own.