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Young's Double Slit Experiment Explained

Here is a recap of Young's Double Slit Experiment: Young directed a beam of monochromatic light at two narrow slits. Behind the slits he placed a screen. He observed a pattern of alternating bright and dark fringes on the screen. Light passing through the two slits can take two different paths to the screen. At some points the crests of the waves arriving from each slit coincide, reinforcing each other to produce a bright fringe. At other points the crest of one wave arrives at the same time as the trough of the other, cancelling each other out to make a dark fringe. The interference of light waves passing through the two slits and recombining on the screen is what creates

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86 views18 pages

Young's Double Slit Experiment Explained

Here is a recap of Young's Double Slit Experiment: Young directed a beam of monochromatic light at two narrow slits. Behind the slits he placed a screen. He observed a pattern of alternating bright and dark fringes on the screen. Light passing through the two slits can take two different paths to the screen. At some points the crests of the waves arriving from each slit coincide, reinforcing each other to produce a bright fringe. At other points the crest of one wave arrives at the same time as the trough of the other, cancelling each other out to make a dark fringe. The interference of light waves passing through the two slits and recombining on the screen is what creates

Uploaded by

Marshell Jones
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Double slit interference

Wavelengths of light and monochromatic light


The wavelength of light determines its colour.
Monochromatic light is light of a single wavelength.
Newton’s Treatise Optiks (1704)
The Nature of Light
Newton’s Corpuscular (Particle) theory of light explained
refraction by arguing the light corpuscles speed up in a refracting
medium.
The Nature of Light
Huygen’s wavelet theory (1678) treated light as a wave and modelled it
using a wavelet theory.
The Nature of Light
Huygen’s wavelet theory (1678) explained refraction through the slowing
down of waves as they enter an optically denser medium.

Fizeau demonstrated that light moves


slower in water in 1851.
Young’s double slits
Young used an arrangement like the one below to produce an interference pattern on
the final screen.

The pattern of evenly spaced alternating bright and dark fringes are now known as
‘Young’s fringes’. They appear parallel to the orientation of the slits.
The Nature of Light
• The two slit interference pattern demonstrated the wave nature
of light
Deciphering Young’s fringes
The waves diffrsact through each slit and superpose as they spread out:

Waves from slits in


phase

Waves from slits in


antiphase (180)
A note on coherence
Why did Young use a single slit before the double slit?

To create an interference pattern the light from the two


slits must be coherent.

A distributed source of light such as a filament bulb does


not emit coherent light.

The small single slit acts as a point source of light waves


so that the light reaching the double slits (s1 and s2) is
coherent.
Fringe spacing

𝒂𝒙
=
𝑫
a

x
Practice Q
Light with an unknown wavelength passes through two narrow slits 0.3mm apart and
forms an interference pattern on a screen 2.0m away. If the distance between the
bright fringes on the screen is 3mm, what is the wavelength?

λ = D = 2.0m

(3 x 0.3)/2000 = 4.5 x10-4 mm x = 3mm

a = 0.3mm
= 4.5 x10-7 m
Deriving fringe spacing
Using path difference
Path difference
Path forfor
difference firstfirst
bright
darkfringe
fringemust
mustbe
beequal
equaltoto1 x 
Path difference
Path forfor
difference second bright
second darkfringe
fringemust
mustbe
beequal
equaltoto21x+,etc.
Path difference for third dark fringe must be equal to 2 + , etc

No path difference
Path difference
Taking to extremes
In reality, the screen distance is often much larger than the slit separation.
Path diff, ΔL = s sin 
D
If  is a small angle then sin  is
approximately equal to tan and :

x Tan  =

Tan  =

a So path difference =

ΔL
Bringing it together: small angles
We know the following:
1. The change in path difference going from one fringe to the next is one wavelength
ΔL = .
2. But we also saw from the previous slide that for small angles ΔL =

This gives us the equation


Wavelength effects
If we review the Young’s fringe formula:

The fringe spacing is proportional to wavelength.

This means that different colours (therefore, wavelengths) of light will produce
differently spaced fringes.

Red light has a larger wavelength


compared to blue, so will produce
a wider spaced fringe pattern.
White light fringes
Since white light is a combination of visible colours, it will produce spectral effects
when passed through Young’s slits.
This is due to different wavelengths constructively interfering at different points.

Further out, fringes are Central fringe is in Even further, fringes


further apart, with red same location for all will begin to merge
towards outer edge. colours – get white to produce more
complex patterns
Recap
Write an explanation of Young’s Double Slit Experiment
including:
• The experimental arrangement.
• What was observed.
• Why the two-slits create an interference pattern.

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