Page 10 - Topic 3
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DIFFRACTION
Diffraction is the bending (spreading) of light about an obstacle. The amount of this spread depends on the
sharpness of the obstacle.
What we will be looking at will be how a wave spreads when it is passed through an opening.
Two slit interference
In 1801, Thomas Young demonstrated that light displayed interference effects by using his two slit interference
experiment. The major breakthrough with this experiment was that it proved the wave behaviour of light!
He used sodium light and passed it through an initial slit so that the two waves for the next slits would be coherent.
