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Answer the following questions: a. In a single slit diffraction experiment, the width of the slit is made double the original width. How does this affect the size and intensity of the cenral diffraction band? b. In what way is diffraction from each slit related to the interference pattern in a double slit experiment? c. When a tiny circular obstacle is placed in the path of light from a distant source, a bright spot is seen at the centre of the shadow of the obstacle. Explain why. d. Two students are separated by a 7m partition wall in a room 10 m high. If both light and sound waves can bend around obstacles, howare the students unable to see each other even though they can converse easily. e.Ray optics is based on the assumption that the light travels in a straight lin. Diffraction effects (observed when light propagates through small apertures/slits a or around small obstacles) disprove this assumption. Yet the ray options assumptioni is so commonly used in understanding location and several other properties of images in optical instruments. What is the justification?

Answer»

Solution :a. The size reduces by half according to the relation size `~(LAMDA)/d`. Intensity increases four fold.
b.The intensity of interference fringes ina double slit arrangement is modulated by the diffraction pattern of each slit.
c. Waves diffracted from the edge of the circular obstacle interfere constructively at the centre of the shadow producing a bright spot.
d. `lamda` of light is `~10^(-7)` m while that of sound is 0.3 m (for v=1 kHz). Diffraction becomes APPRECIABLE when size of the DIFFRACTING body is comparable to wavelength. The screen is too large to OBSERVE diffraction of light. Hence the answer.
e. Justification based on what is explained in (d). Typical sizes of apertures involved in ordinary optical instruments are much larger than the wavelength of ligth.


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