Part 1 Return to Optics Page Optical Fibers, Part 2 Fiber optics is one of the newer buzzwords these days.
Optical fiber has a number of advantages over the copper wire used to make connections electrically.
Also, because light has a much higher frequency than any radio signal we can generate, fiber has a wider bandwidth and can therefore carry more information at one time. Looking sideways at it, we can see right through it. Consider an ordinary glass of water. We know that if we look through the water at an angle, images will appear distorted. This happens because light actually slows down a little bit when it enters the water, and speeds up again when it moves back into the air again.