February 14, 2000
I forgot about updating my progress but I guess it is better to do it late then never do it all. I set up part of the wave front sensor. This involved aligning the laser with the polarizers and the birefringent crystal. I also made some small glass objects to image by melting thin glass rods.
February 23, 2000
This past week I worked more on the setup and looked for the interfrence effect for a glass ring that I made. With the CCD camera I could not see a difference in inesity for the glass ring so I will try some different objects.
February 26, 2000
I am now checking to see if the crystal has enough birefringence to see the effect. I constructed a Mach-Zehnder Interferometer in which I will place the crystal so that it can be rotated. I will then measure the index of refraction as function of the angle.