Light work at Chiang Mai University, Thailand.

The teaching and learning optics in Thailand is some how rather slowly developed. This is could possibly due to its importance, as seen by the educators and scientists in Thailand, was not so pronounced in the past. This made Thai scientists and researchers in many other disciplines lag of basic optics knowledge to getting involve with today advanced optics and photonics technologies. The need for high precision and high speed of the measurement and control in today experiment urges them to get involve in optics and photonics techniques more than ever before. At Chiang Mai university we offer 4-credit course: Optics and Spectroscopy. It covers a conventional optics course detail as referred in most conventional optics text books. Advanced optics course is also offered at higher level. The development of research activities utilizing optics and photonics techniques has been very slow due to the higher cost for most of the equipment involved. Very often that we have to assemble our own designed microcomputer-based equipment. The multi-scaler and a computer to serve as a photon correlator in dynamic light scattering (DLS) system to study correlation length in a liquid mixture at its critical point is one of the examples. The Ph.D. projects work in our section involve medical laser and electro-optics properties of a liquid mixture are some examples of our interest.