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Chapter 27 | Wave Optics 1199
27 WAVE OPTICS
Figure 27.1 The colors reflected by this compact disc vary with angle and are not caused by pigments. Colors such as these are direct evidence of the wave character of light. (credit: Infopro, Wikimedia Commons)
Chapter Outline
27.1. The Wave Aspect of Light: Interference 27.2. Huygens's Principle: Diffraction
27.3. Young’s Double Slit Experiment
27.4. Multiple Slit Diffraction
27.5. Single Slit Diffraction
27.6. Limits of Resolution: The Rayleigh Criterion
27.7. Thin Film Interference
27.8. Polarization
27.9. *Extended Topic* Microscopy Enhanced by the Wave Characteristics of Light
Connection for AP® Courses
If you have ever looked at the reds, blues, and greens in a sunlit soap bubble and wondered how straw-colored soapy water could produce them, you have hit upon one of the many phenomena that can only be explained by the wave character of light. The same is true for the colors seen in an oil slick or in the light reflected from an optical data disk. These and other interesting phenomena, such as the dispersion of white light into a rainbow of colors when passed through a narrow slit, cannot be explained fully by geometric optics. In these cases, light interacts with objects and exhibits a number of wave characteristics. The branch of optics that considers the behavior of light when it exhibits wave characteristics is called “wave optics” (or sometimes “physical optics”).