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The Principal material used in optics is glass. Plastics can only gain acceptance in optics if they have properties not encountered with glass or if a desired article can be produced more rationally from a plastic. An example of the first case is provided by UV light guides consisting of a quartz glass core surrounded by a plastic cladding; there is no glass with a sufficiently low refractive index. Examples of the second case are viewfinder optics for camerás and lenses for sunglasses and industrial safety spectacles.
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Helmut Dislich (1979) studied this question.
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