Physics2054LabInterferenceandtheDiffractionGrating.pdfVIP

Physics 2054 Lab: Interference and the Diffraction Grating In this experiment, you will explore some of the wave properties of light. We will send light waves at various frequencies (and therefore various wavelengths) through an item called a diffraction grating. A diffraction grating is an array of a very large number of closely spaced slits. When held to your eye, it will seem essentially transparent, but there will be “rainbow” patterns everywhere in your field of view. The rainbow patterns are the result of the white light (really a combination of all colors of light) being broken up into its spectrum, or individual constituent wavelengths. When light passes through a diffraction grating two things occur; diffraction and interference. Diffraction occurs whenever a wave passes through an aperture (such as a slit or hole) that has dimensions comparable with the wavelength of the wave phenomenon. In the case of light, its wavelengths are centered around 500 nm (1 nm =10-9m). The exact bounds of visible light will be one of the things you determine in this experiment. Interference of light waves is just a special case of this phenomenon which is dealt with in Chapters 13 and 14 of your text. If two light waves destructively interfere, one’s maxima coincide with the other’s minima and the result is darkness. If two light waves constructively interfere, one’s maxima coincide with the other’s maxima and the result is a bright region. For a diffraction grating, the bending of light as it passes through any slit works together with the interference of light waves passing through different slits to produce well-defined bright and dark regions. The location of the bright regions is given by: m d sin  , where m=0,1, 2, 3, , d is the width of one of the slits