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This topic has appeared in the trending rankings 1 time(s) in the past year. While it does not trend frequently, its appearance suggests a renewed or concentrated surge of public interest.
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Chief_ray entered the ranking for the first time today at position #. This is its highest position ever recorded.
This topic has appeared in the English Wikipedia rankings 1 time. It first appeared on 2026-03-13 and was most recently seen on 2026-03-13.
In optics, a ray is an idealized geometrical model of light or other electromagnetic radiation, obtained by choosing a curve that is perpendicular to the wavefronts of the actual light, and that points in the direction of energy flow. Rays are used to model the propagation of light through an optical system, by dividing the real light field up into discrete rays that can be computationally propagated through the system by the techniques of ray tracing. This allows even very complex optical systems to be analyzed mathematically or simulated by computer. Ray tracing uses approximate solutions to Maxwell's equations that are valid as long as the light waves propagate through and around objects whose dimensions are much greater than the light's wavelength. Ray optics or geometrical optics does not describe phenomena such as diffraction, which require wave optics theory. Some wave phenomena such as interference can be modeled in limited circumstances by adding phase to the ray model.
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