Photometry on PGRE?

[Blinky]

Are there questions on photometry on PGRE? I picked up a physics problems book and it has a section on photometry, I glanced over it and OMG... I have never even heard of all this terminology:

Luminous intensity
Luminance
Illuminance
Luminosity
Luminous flux

Ok, I have heard about brightness and intensity and I know what they are, but... I looked in Halliday - not a single one of these words show up in the index. So I'm doing something wrong I thought, and clearly my undergrad optics course was a rip-off, since we never learned anything about those things. Then I read that someone recommends a book by Hecht, well guess what - same thing, it's got nothing on anything that starts with an "Lu".

Please tell me that there's nothing to worry about and this sort of thing won't be on PGRE

[physicsworks]

Are there questions on photometry on PGRE?

I don't think so, but you should check this.

Ok, I have heard about brightness and intensity and I know what they are, but... I looked in Halliday - not a single one of these words show up in the index.

what makes you think it should be in Halliday&Resnik? It's a freshman (engineering) course. In post-soviet countries this book can be used for high school physics class. Nevertheless, since luminous intensity is one of the SI basic units I think H&R should at least mention these things.

P.S. You'll definitely find this kind of stuff in "Principles of optics" by Born&Wolf.

[HappyQuark]

Are there questions on photometry on PGRE? I picked up a physics problems book and it has a section on photometry, I glanced over it and OMG... I have never even heard of all this terminology:

Luminous intensity
Luminance
Illuminance
Luminosity
Luminous flux

Ok, I have heard about brightness and intensity and I know what they are, but... I looked in Halliday - not a single one of these words show up in the index. So I'm doing something wrong I thought, and clearly my undergrad optics course was a rip-off, since we never learned anything about those things. Then I read that someone recommends a book by Hecht, well guess what - same thing, it's got nothing on anything that starts with an "Lu".

Please tell me that there's nothing to worry about and this sort of thing won't be on PGRE

I don't recall there being anything specifically from photometry on the PGRE but most of the terms you identified I do recall seeing in my optics coursework so I wouldn't think it too odd to see it on the exam.

[Blinky]

Are there questions on photometry on PGRE?

I don't think so, but you should check this.

Ok, I have heard about brightness and intensity and I know what they are, but... I looked in Halliday - not a single one of these words show up in the index.

what makes you think it should be in Halliday&Resnik? It's a freshman (engineering) course.

I also mentioned optics by Hecht, it is a book on optics only and there's none of that stuff in there.

You'll definitely find this kind of stuff in "Principles of optics" by Born&Wolf.

[/quote]
It's not really a question of where I can find it. Sure, I know where to look if I absolutely have to find these concepts, but when I looked at the books that people tend to recommend for PGRE prep., i.e. H&R and Hecht, there was nothing there. And it's not mentioned in the list of topics by the GRE web site, though I haven't dont a single practice test yet.

Anyhow. Might be a good idea to study it regardless, it doesn't look all that hard, just unfamiliar.

[physicsworks]

but when I looked at the books that people tend to recommend for PGRE prep., i.e. H&R and Hecht, there was nothing there.

then probably there will be no photometry on the PGRE
Well, I can say that I cannot remember any single photometry problem in all 4 practice tests plus two real exams that I took.