SHS- Physical Science (Dispersion, Scattering, Interference, and

Diffraction Electron as a Wave)

I. Introductory Concept
Light is a wave and a particle at the same time; as a wave, it can be dispersed,
scattered, interfered and diffracted.
In this module, you will learn about the experimental evidence showing that
electron can behave like a wave. However, for better understanding, we also need to
be familiar first with other properties of light like diffraction and interference. Other
phenomena like dispersion and scattering of light waves are also included in this
module.

II. Learning Competencies

Most Essential Learning Competency:
✔ Cite experimental evidence showing that electrons can behave like waves
(S11/12PS-IVg-64)
✔ Differentiate dispersion, scattering, interference, and diffraction
(S11/12PS-IVh-65)

III. Activities
PRACTICAL WORK #1:
Let’s Make a RAINBOW!
Materials:
● Strong sunlight/flashlight
● 1 Glass prism/small mirror/glass/bottle half-filled with water
● 1 White cardboard/paper (optional)
Procedure:
1. Place a piece of white paper on the ground under the sunlight.
2. Put the prism on or above the paper. In the absence of prism, a bottle half – filled with
water or a transparent glass can be used as a substitute. (Please see Figure 1&2)
3. Rotate and move prism around until you see rainbow colors on the paper. Figure 1 show
sample result of this step.
4. If you do not have prism, use a small mirror, flashlight and water to make a rainbow on
the wall, the small mirror should be put in the water inside the glass at an angle.

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 Light should directly shine at the mirror, shift the mirror to find the right angle until a
reflection is formed on the wall. Then, adjust the angle of the mirror inside the glass until you
see a rainbow formed on the wall. (The room should be dark.)

Figure 1. Rainbow Prism. The white light from the

su n forms a rainbow.
Figure Thiscan
2. Rainbow shows dispersion.using a
be produced
Photo Source: transparent
glass with water. Photo Source :
http s://www.rookieparenting.com/make-your-
https://mariaisaac.wordpress.com/2012/03/0 1/build-the-
own-rainbow-science-experiment/
pentaprism-get-the-rainbow/

Figure 4. Dispersion of light using mirror. Use a shallow pan

Figure 3. Rainbow on the wall. Small mirror and a glass can
be used to produce a rainbow on the wall. Photo Source:
https://www.rookieparenting.com/make-your-own-
rainbow-science-experiment/
with water and mirror to observe how white light is
dispersed into rainbow colors. Photo Source:
https://www.physicscentral.com/experiment/physicsathom
e/rainbow.cfm

Guide Questions:

1. What property of light is exhibited by the rainbow activity?

2. Explain how rainbow is produced in the activity?

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 PRACTICAL WORK #2:
Let there be LIGHT! (The Tyndall Effect Activity)
Materials:
● Flashlight
● 300 mL Water
● 3 drinking glasses
● 2 tablespoons of milk
● 2 tablespoons of flour

Procedure:
1. Pour 100 mL water in each glass. If
there are no measuring devices, you can
estimate the amount of water in each glass Figure 3. The flashlight can be utilized as a light source in
demonstrating Tyndall Effect. Photo source:
provided that the amount of water will be the https://www.thoughtco.com/definition-of-tyndall-effect-
same. 605756#:~:text=Shining%20a%20flashlight%20beam%20into,par
ticles%20on%20the%20light%20beam.
2. Label the glasses using the
following guide:
Glass A: Water and salt Glass
B: Water with milk Glass C:
Flour and Water
3. Use the flashlight to observe the scattering of light. Please refer to Figure 3.

Guide Questions:
1. Differentiate your observation of how light reacts with the three set-ups.

2. Which glass(es) shows Tyndall Effect? Recall that Tyndall Effect is the
scattering of light by particles in colloid or suspension.

3. Explain why Tyndall Effect can be observed in your answer in number 2.

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 PRACTICAL WORK #3:
SIMPLE EXPERIMENT on DIFFRACTION and INTERFERENCE of LIGHT
WAVES (Activity was adopted from Practical Work in High School Physics: Activities
for Students by UP NISMED)
Materials:
● Strong white light source (fluorescent or incandescent bulb at home)
● Single slit
● Double slits (slit separation d= 0.10mm, 0.15mm, 0.20mm, 0.25mm, slit width
a= 0.05mm)
Note: Single and double slit can be made from a piece of used
cardboard

Procedure:
1. Look through a single slit close to your eye. Describe and
draw what you see.
2. Hold two single slits about 30 cm apart, as shown in Fig.
4. This slit should be aligned and parallel. Look through a
single slit under bright white light (fluorescent light or a
straight filament lamp). Draw what you see.
3. Hold a single slit with one Figure 4. The experimental set-up using two
single slit. Photo source: UPNISMED: Practical
hand. Hold a double slit (d=0.1mm) Work in High School Physics page 82

with the other hand,

bring it close to the eye and look through this at about 30 cm
away from the single slit as shown in Figure 5. The slits
should be aligned and parallel.
Figure 5. Set-up with a single slit and a double slit.
Photo source: UPNISMED: Practical Work in High
School Physics page 82
Describe and draw what you see. Compare your observation with what you
observed in Step 2. Repeat Step 3 using the other double slits (d=0.15mm,
d=0.20 mm, d=0.25mm) one at a time. Draw what you observed for each
double slit.
Guide Questions:
1. Describe what happens to the white light in Steps 1 and 2 when a single
slit and two single slits are used. What property of waves is being demonstrated in this
procedure?

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 2. Describe what happens to white light in Step 3 when a single slit and a double slit are
used. What property of waves is manifested in this set – up? What is the important
characteristic of the light source for it to exhibit this property of waves?

3. Compare the interference fringes formed in the different double slits.

4. Predict what will happen to the diffraction and interference pattern when the width of the
single slit was increased.

The rainbow activity shows dispersion. Dispersion happens when light is refracted when
it passes through another medium.
Dispersion of light is the splitting of white light into
rainbow colors due to the refractive index of the medium and the
wavelength of the light. If the light entering the prism is not a
single color then the beam that will appear also has different
colors arranged in a definite order. This is because the light of
different colors has varying speeds in different medium except
air. The speed of light in a transparent medium decrease as the
wavelength of light decreases.
Sir Isaac Newton, while studying the image of a
heavenly body formed due to refraction of white light by a lens,
found that the image is colored at its edges. He thought that the
Fig. 6. Sir Isaac Newton work with white light led to
the discovery of the visible spectrum of light which colored image is due to some defect in the
influenced the development of the color wheel.
Photo source: https://munsell.com/color-blog/sir- lens. He then repeated the experiment with a carefully polished lens, but the
isaac-newton-color-wheel/
image was still colored. Newton then thought that the fault is
not in the lens, but there is something in the nature of white light itself due to which the
image is colored at its edges. To investigate it further, he performed another experiment with
a prism.

Newton observed white light from sun to enter a dark room through a small aperture
in a window. He placed a glass prism in the path of light rays. The light coming out of the
prism was received on a white screen which registered a colored patch like rainbow that was
called spectrum.
The second practical work activity exhibits Tyndall Effect. The Tyndall effect is the
scattering of light which can be observed as a light beam passes through

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 a colloid. The suspended particles in the colloid makes the beam visible. This was first
described by 19th-century physicist John Tyndall.

Scattering of light is the phenomenon in which

light rays get diverged from its straight path after hitting
an obstacle like dust or gas molecules, water vapors and
other particles suspended in a medium. Scattering of light
is responsible for some phenomena such as Tyndall
effect and the red sunrise and sunset.

Practical work number three in this module

Figure 7. Sunset in Oas, Albay. The colors we see in the
utilized single and double slits. As you look at the light sky are due to scattering of light.
Photo Source: Ms. Antonette Perdigon.
through one slit you observe thin vertical white and dark
bands. The bending of light after passing through the
opening is the responsible for this observation. The
bending of light as it passes through an obstruction such
as a small slit is called
diffraction. When slit becomes narrow, diffraction patterns are more visible. Moreover,
when you use double slits, you can observe that light passing through the slits interfere.
Interference of light occurs when two beams of light lay over another.
The double-slit experiment was first performed in 1800s by the English scientist
Thomas Young to explain whether light is a particle or a wave. Using sunlight diffracted
with a small slit, Young projected the light rays from the slit into another screen with two
slits placed side by side. Light passing through the pair of slits was then allowed to fall into
another screen.

Figure 8. The double slit experiment by Thomas Young.

Photo source: mysearch.org.uk

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 The following are the conditions for the interference of light to be observable:
1. The sources must be coherent. This means that sources must maintain a constant
phase with each other. Lasers are advisable to achieve these conditions.
2. The sources must be monochromatic or a single wavelength. Utilizing
sources with the same frequency will satisfy this condition.
3. The principle of superposition must apply. This means that light waves passing
through each other must not be disturbed and that they travel at the same medium
at the same time.

Having all these conditions, Young continued with his experiment and found out that
when light came out from two slits and arrive at a point on the screen, they either combine
constructively or destructively. Bright lights appear on the screen when they are combined
constructively and dark lines appear on the screen when they combine destructively.

Figure 9. Interference of light using two slits. Photo source: Project EASE: Nature and Property of Light, page 25.

Young observed that when the size of the slits was reduced and brought closer,
distinct bands of color separated by dark regions was produced. This is known as
interference patterns which is only possible if light were acting like a wave.

In 1905, Albert Einstein proved that light is consist of discrete particles which he
called "photons." The double-slit experiment conducted using single photons showed an
interference pattern also despite of the premise that single particle shot toward the screen
should not be able to interfere with itself. This showed that light sometimes behaves as a
wave and sometimes behaves as a particle. This is known as the wave-particle duality.

In 1924, a French physicist, Louis de Broglie (pronounced “de broy”) proposed

that if light is dualistic in nature, matter should also exhibit this duality trait. He said that
electron can also exhibit a similar wave – particle duality. This means that electrons should
show the properties of waves like diffraction. His bold ideas were

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 verified by a diffraction experiment with electrons in 1927 with Clinton J. Davisson and
Lester H. Germer from the United States by shooting electron particles onto a crystal of
nickel.

In the same year, George P. Thomson from Scotland conducted an experiment by

firing electrons towards thin metal foil which gave him the same result as Davisson and
Germer. As a historical note, the wave – particle duality of electrons was demonstrated by
father and son tandem. George P. Thomson is the son of JJ Thomson who won Nobel Prize in
1906 for discovering electron. The father showed that electron is a particle while the son
proved that it is a wave.

IV. Answer Key

PRACTICAL WORK #1: Let’s Make a RAINBOW!
1. Dispersion and refraction
2. The dispersion of colors in the materials used like prism, bottled filled with water,
mirror or glass occurs because of the refractive index of the material. When light
enters the material, the difference in the refractive index of air and the material
causes light to bend. The angle of bending is different for different wavelengths of
light. As the white light moves through the different faces of the prism or
materials used, the different colors bend different amounts and in doing so spread
out a rainbow.
PRACTICAL WORK #2: Let there be LIGHT! (The Tyndall Effect Activity)
1. The light beam is not visible in glass A that is filled with water only while the
light beam can be seen through glasses B and C which were filled with the
mixture of water and milk (colloid) and a mixture of flour and water (suspension)
respectively
2. Tyndall effect can be seen in glasses B and C.
3. The presence of particles scattered in glasses B and C allows us to see the beam of
light.
The larger particles in a colloid or suspension scatter and reflect light causing the
light beam to be big enough that can actually be visible to the naked eye.

PRACTICAL WORK #3: SIMPLE EXPERIMENT on DIFFRACTION and

INTERFERENCE of LIGHT WAVES
1. White light can pass through the slit. The property being demonstrated is diffraction.
2. White light passing through the slit interfere. This exhibit interference of light. Light
source must be coherent and monochromatic.
3. When the size of the slits was reduced and brought them closer together, the light passing
through the slits and onto the screen produced distinct bands of color separated by dark
regions.
4. When the width of the single slit was increased, the pattern might not be visible.

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 V. Reflection
Share your final insights by completing the following sentence prompts. I
have learned that…

I wish to ask my teacher about…

VI. References
Chebrolu, Srayanth et.al. 2019. "brilliant.org." brilliant.org. Accessed August 9, 2020.
https://brilliant.org/wiki/dispersion-and-scattering-of-light/.
Kumar, Abhay. 2019. "student-baba.com." Accessed August 11, 2020. https://www.student-
baba.com/2019/07/Applications-and-examples-of-diffraction-of- light-in-real-life.html.
Munsell, Albert. 2018. "Munsell.com." Accessed August 12, 2020.
https://munsell.com/color-blog/sir-isaac-newton-color-wheel.
Nalda, Nora F. et.al. 2002. Practical Work in High School Physics: Activities for Students.
Quezon city: National Institute for Science and Mathematics Education Development
University of the Philippines .
Patalinghug, Wyona C. et.al. 2016. Teaching Guide for Senior High School:General Chemistry 1.
Quezon City: Commission on Higher Education.
2016. "wikimedia.org." wikimedia.org. May 11. Accessed August 12, 2020.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Dispersionprism.jpg.
Young, Hugh D and Freedman, Roger A. 2020. University Physics with Modern Physics
Fifteenth Edition in SI Units. Pearson International
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