15 Questions
According to Huygens' principle, what are the wavelets formed by drawing a half-circle around each point on a wave called?
Wavelets
What is the term for the bending of a wave around an obstacle?
Diffraction
What happens when waves interfere constructively?
The waves combine into one wave with higher amplitude
According to Huygens' Principle, how can you predict a wave's position in the future?
By analyzing its current position
What did 19th-century physicists discover about light through an experiment with a coin's shadow?
Light is a wave
What did some scientists in the 17th and 18th centuries begin to think about light?
It might actually be a wave
Which type of interference occurs when waves are an exact number of wavelengths apart, causing crests and troughs to line up?
Constructive interference
What is the formula for calculating the path difference in a single slit experiment?
$d \cdot \sin(\theta)$
What happens when the total path difference between the top and bottom of a single slit is equal to 1.5 wavelengths?
Constructive interference
According to the text, what happens to the rays passing through the middle third and bottom third of the slit?
They cancel each other out
What happens to the rays passing through the top third of the slit?
They create a bright line
What does diffraction do to the light waves?
It makes them curve around the coin's edges
What happens when diffracted waves run into each other?
They interfere with each other
What happens at the places where the waves interfere destructively?
They create shadows
What happens at the places where the waves interfere constructively?
They create a bright line
Test your knowledge of interference and the path difference in a slit experiment with this quiz. Learn how waves can either constructively or destructively interfere and how trigonometry can be used to calculate the path difference.
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