Behavior of Light
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How Light Travels
The first successful theory of light wave motion in three dimensions was proposed by Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens in 1678. Huygens suggested that light wave peaks form surfaces like the layers of an onion. In a vacuum, or a uniform material, the surfaces are spherical. These wave surfaces advance, or spread out, through space at the speed of light. Huygens also suggested that each point on a wave surface can act like a new source of smaller spherical waves, which may be called wavelets, that are in step with the wave at that point. The envelope of all the wavelets is a wave surface. An envelope is a curve or surface that touches a whole family of other curves or surfaces like the wavelets. This construction explains how light seems to spread away from a pinhole rather than going in one straight line through the hole. The same effect blurs the edges of shadows. Huygens’s principle, with minor modifications, accurately describes all forms of wave motion.
Interference
Interference in waves occurs when two waves overlap. If a peak of one wave is aligned with the peak of the second wave, then the two waves will produce a larger wave with a peak that is the sum of the two overlapping peaks. This is called constructive interference. If a peak of one wave is aligned with a trough of the other, then the waves will tend to cancel each other out and they will produce a smaller wave or no wave at all. This is called destructive interference.
In 1803 English scientist Thomas Young studied interference of light waves by letting light pass through a screen with two slits. In this configuration, the light from each slit spreads out according to Huygens’s principle and eventually overlaps with light from the other slit. If a screen is set up in the region where the two waves overlap, a point on the screen will be light or dark depending on whether the two waves interfere constructively or destructively. If the difference between the distance from one slit to a point on the screen and the other slit to the same point on the screen is an exact number of wavelengths, then light waves arriving at that point will be in step and constructively interfere, making the point bright. If the difference is an exact odd number of half wavelengths, then light waves will arrive out of step, with one wave’s trough arriving at the same time as another wave’s peak. The waves will destructively interfere, making the point dark. The resulting pattern is a series of parallel bright and dark lines on the screen.
Instruments called interferometers use various arrangements of reflectors to produce two beams of light, which are allowed to interfere. These instruments can be used to measure tiny differences in distance or in the speed of light in one of the beams by observing the interference pattern produced by the two beams.
Holography is another application of interference. A hologram is made by splitting a light wave in two with a partially reflecting mirror. One part of the light wave travels through the mirror and is sent directly to a photographic plate. The other part of the wave is reflected first toward a subject, a face for example, and then toward the plate. The resulting photograph is a hologram. Instead of being an image of the face, it is an image of the interference pattern between the two beams. A normal photograph records only the light and dark features of the face and ignores the positions of peaks and troughs of the light wave that form the interference pattern. Since the full light wave is restored when a hologram is illuminated, the viewer can see whatever the original wave contained, including the three-dimensional quality of the original face.
Diffraction
Diffraction is the spreading of light waves as they pass through a small opening or around a boundary. Young’s principle of interference can be applied to Huygens’s explanation of diffraction to explain fringe patterns in diffracted light. As a beam of light emerges from a slit in an illuminated screen, the light some distance away from the screen will consist of overlapping wavelets from different points of the light wave in the opening of the slit. When the light strikes a spot on a display screen across from the slit, these points are at different distances from the spot, so their wavelets can interfere and lead to a pattern of light and dark regions. The pattern produced by light from a single slit will not be as pronounced as a pattern from two slits. This is because there are an infinite number of interfering waves, one from each point emerging from the slit, and their interference patterns overlap one another.
How Light Travels
The first successful theory of light wave motion in three dimensions was proposed by Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens in 1678. Huygens suggested that light wave peaks form surfaces like the layers of an onion. In a vacuum, or a uniform material, the surfaces are spherical. These wave surfaces advance, or spread out, through space at the speed of light. Huygens also suggested that each point on a wave surface can act like a new source of smaller spherical waves, which may be called wavelets, that are in step with the wave at that point. The envelope of all the wavelets is a wave surface. An envelope is a curve or surface that touches a whole family of other curves or surfaces like the wavelets. This construction explains how light seems to spread away from a pinhole rather than going in one straight line through the hole. The same effect blurs the edges of shadows. Huygens’s principle, with minor modifications, accurately describes all forms of wave motion.
Interference
Interference in waves occurs when two waves overlap. If a peak of one wave is aligned with the peak of the second wave, then the two waves will produce a larger wave with a peak that is the sum of the two overlapping peaks. This is called constructive interference. If a peak of one wave is aligned with a trough of the other, then the waves will tend to cancel each other out and they will produce a smaller wave or no wave at all. This is called destructive interference.
In 1803 English scientist Thomas Young studied interference of light waves by letting light pass through a screen with two slits. In this configuration, the light from each slit spreads out according to Huygens’s principle and eventually overlaps with light from the other slit. If a screen is set up in the region where the two waves overlap, a point on the screen will be light or dark depending on whether the two waves interfere constructively or destructively. If the difference between the distance from one slit to a point on the screen and the other slit to the same point on the screen is an exact number of wavelengths, then light waves arriving at that point will be in step and constructively interfere, making the point bright. If the difference is an exact odd number of half wavelengths, then light waves will arrive out of step, with one wave’s trough arriving at the same time as another wave’s peak. The waves will destructively interfere, making the point dark. The resulting pattern is a series of parallel bright and dark lines on the screen.
Instruments called interferometers use various arrangements of reflectors to produce two beams of light, which are allowed to interfere. These instruments can be used to measure tiny differences in distance or in the speed of light in one of the beams by observing the interference pattern produced by the two beams.
Holography is another application of interference. A hologram is made by splitting a light wave in two with a partially reflecting mirror. One part of the light wave travels through the mirror and is sent directly to a photographic plate. The other part of the wave is reflected first toward a subject, a face for example, and then toward the plate. The resulting photograph is a hologram. Instead of being an image of the face, it is an image of the interference pattern between the two beams. A normal photograph records only the light and dark features of the face and ignores the positions of peaks and troughs of the light wave that form the interference pattern. Since the full light wave is restored when a hologram is illuminated, the viewer can see whatever the original wave contained, including the three-dimensional quality of the original face.
Diffraction
Diffraction is the spreading of light waves as they pass through a small opening or around a boundary. Young’s principle of interference can be applied to Huygens’s explanation of diffraction to explain fringe patterns in diffracted light. As a beam of light emerges from a slit in an illuminated screen, the light some distance away from the screen will consist of overlapping wavelets from different points of the light wave in the opening of the slit. When the light strikes a spot on a display screen across from the slit, these points are at different distances from the spot, so their wavelets can interfere and lead to a pattern of light and dark regions. The pattern produced by light from a single slit will not be as pronounced as a pattern from two slits. This is because there are an infinite number of interfering waves, one from each point emerging from the slit, and their interference patterns overlap one another.
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