Question

FIGURE Q33.1 shows light waves passing through two closely spaced, narrow slits. The graph shows the intensity of light on a screen behind the slits. Reproduce these graph axes, including the zero and the tick marks locating the double-slit fringes, then draw a graph to show how the light-intensity pattern will appear if the right slit is blocked, allowing light to go through only the left slit. Explain your reasoning.

Short answer

We'd get a single-slit pattern. The intensity in this pattern peaks below the slit and decreases as we move away from the centre. The central peak is twice as wide as the other peaks.

Step-by-step solution

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Step2:Find light intensity

The light intensity will be similar to that of diffraction from a single thin slit. This assumes that the slit is no wider than 1 mm.

For the intensity versus position graph, we'd get something like this: