In a double-slit experiment, if the distance between the slits is doubled, what happens to the fringe separation on the screen?
Practice Questions
1 question
Q1
In a double-slit experiment, if the distance between the slits is doubled, what happens to the fringe separation on the screen?
It doubles
It halves
It remains the same
It quadruples
The fringe separation is inversely proportional to the distance between the slits; thus, if the distance is doubled, the fringe separation halves.
Questions & Step-by-step Solutions
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Q
Q: In a double-slit experiment, if the distance between the slits is doubled, what happens to the fringe separation on the screen?
Solution: The fringe separation is inversely proportional to the distance between the slits; thus, if the distance is doubled, the fringe separation halves.
Steps: 6
Step 1: Understand the double-slit experiment. It involves light passing through two slits and creating a pattern of bright and dark lines (fringes) on a screen.
Step 2: Know that fringe separation is the distance between these bright or dark lines on the screen.
Step 3: Learn that fringe separation is affected by the distance between the slits. Specifically, it is inversely proportional to this distance.
Step 4: If the distance between the slits is doubled, it means the new distance is 2 times the original distance.
Step 5: Since fringe separation is inversely proportional to the distance between the slits, if the distance increases, the fringe separation decreases.
Step 6: Therefore, if the distance is doubled, the fringe separation becomes half of what it was before.
