Adam S. Bolton May 15, 2002 boltonGmit.edu MIT 8.02 Spring 2002 Assignment #11 Solutions Problem 11.1 Single slit diffraction. (Giancoli 36-9.) (a) If you double the width of a single slit, you will double the electrie field wave amplitude Ey at the center of the screen. Since light intensity at the center of the screen Ip is propor- tional to B3, Ip will increase by a factor of 4. (b) Energy conservation is not violated because the intensity becomes more sharply peaked around @ = 0. For example, notice that the angular position of the first minimum (given by sin @ = A/a) will be reduced when the slit width a is doubled (keeping wavelength A fixed), The following plot of Ip vs. @ illustrates the situation, with a = 4 + a = 2A. For each curve, the total power transmitted is proportional to the area under the curve. One can see that although the a 2A curve has a peak four times higher than the a curve, the area underneath is more like twice the area under the a = A curve, in agreement with the expectation of energy conservation. a= lambda lambda of origi “80-60 2 0 2% 40 60 80 theta (degrees)MIT 8.02 Spring 2002 ~ Assignment #11 Solutions 2 Problem 11.2 Gratings ~ Physies and candle light ~ Home experiment II. (a) The slit separation is the inverse of the number of lines per millimeter: 1 = 0mm 10-*m = 10,000A . (b) The angular positions of the maxima from a diffraction grating are given by Giancoli Equation (36-13) (p. 900): sind = ue The first-order (m = 1) positions for red light and blue light are Ossua = avesin (£3300 toes = aresin (TT 55 | cen, (4500) _ oe no 39.1° , A 1,biue = aresin (Fem) =267 7 and the angle between first-order red and blue lines is AG; red—bive = F1,red — A1,bine = 12.3" (c) sind cannot exceed 1, so for any given wavelength d and line spacing d, the highest possible order m is the greatest integer such that mA/d is still less than or equal to 1 mA/d <1= m< d/d, thus for red and blue light we find 22 => Mmax,bive = 2 (A) The zero-order spectrum is white; it contains all colors, unseparated in angle. (e) Observing candlelight in a dark room, I can see the first-order maxima in red and blue quite easily. I can also make out the second-order blue maximum (although it is much fainter). This agrees with the prediction of (c). (£) For € = 24 inches, I find L = 341 inches, giving tan @ = ¢/L = 0.70 + 0 = 35° for the position of the first-order red maximum: not exactly 39°, but fairly close. What I've judged as “red” is probably more “orange” than 6,300-A light.MIT 8.02 Spring 2002 ~ Assignment #11 Solutions 3 (g) Here we must consider two apparently distinct cases. Suppose we are observing the higher-order maxima that appear to the right of the light source. In case (i), we rotate the grating by an angle about the vertical by moving the left side of the grating towards the source and the right side away from the source. In case (ii) we move the left side away from the source and the right side towards the source. We take @ to be the angle between the light source (ie. the zero-order maximum) and the higher-order maxima: this is the angle that we observe most directly. Let us also define ¢ to be the angle of the diffracted rays with respect to the grating. Let d be the slit spacing. ‘The situation is shown in the following diagram: case (i): case (ii): @ light source side 2 observer side First consider case (i). With respect to the ray on the left, the ray on the right has an additional pathlength dsin y on the source side of the grating and another additional path- length dsind on the observer side. The condition for constructive interference (and thus the appearance of a maximum) is therefore dsin @ + dsi md. Next consider case (ii). Now the left-hand ray has an additional pathlength dsiny on the source side, while the right-hand ray still has an additional pathlength dsin @ on the observer side. The condition for the appearance of a maximum is now dsing — dsiny = md. From the geometry, we deduce that @ = @+ w in case (i) and 9 = @ — in case (ii). The ve interference criteria for cases (i) and (ii) can then be re-expressed as sin@—@)+sind = ma for case (i), iv sin(@+9)—siny = ™ for case (ii)