written by Wolfgang Christian

The Pinhole Camera Model demonstrates the operation of a pinhole camera. Light rays leaving the top and bottom on an object of height h pass through a pinhole and strike a flat screen.  These rays travel in straight lines accord with the principles of geometric optics.  Drag the object and observe the image on the camera screen. Simple geometry shows that the image is inverted and that the ratio of the image to object size (the magnification) is the same as the ratio of the image to object distance.

The Pinhole Camera Model was developed using the Easy Java Simulations (EJS) modeling tool.  It is distributed as a ready-to-run (compiled) Java archive.   Double clicking the jar file will run the program if Java is installed.  You can modify this simulation if you have EJS installed by right-clicking within the map and selecting "Open Ejs Model" from the pop-up menu item.

• Download ejs_optics_PinholeCamera.jar - 1984kb Java Archive File

Last Modified June 11, 2014

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An activity that uses a pinhole to measure the size of the sun.

This file is available in multiple formats: .pdf, .docx

• Download PinholeActivity.pdf - 320kb Adobe PDF Document
• Download Pinhole.docx - 200kb Word Document

Released under a This material is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 by Anne Cox.

Last Modified June 6, 2012

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This file has previous versions.

The source code zip archive contains an EJS-XML representation of the Pinhole Camera Model.   Unzip this archive in your EJS workspace to compile and run this model using EJS.

• Download ejs_optics_PinholeCamera.zip - 24kb Compressed File

Last Modified April 20, 2012