Re: pinhole Young's Experiment

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From: pauld@exploratorium.edu
Date: Mon Sep 02 2002 - 21:13:21 PDT 

Message-Id: <200209030413.g834DKt01601@isaac.exploratorium.edu>
From: pauld@exploratorium.edu
Subject: Re: pinhole Young's Experiment
Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2002 21:13:20 US/Pacific

Charlie

In the two slit experiment, when the light cancels at one location it adds
together at another(off to the side). The brightening of the light at the
addition region exactly uses the energy lost from the cancellation region. This
is usually the case in all forms of interference, indeed the energy vanishes from
one region but it appears somewhere else.

Paul D

> The other day a student asked a good question that puzzled me:
>
> When light (as in Young's double-slit experiment) interferes destructively,
> where has the energy gone that existed in the two waves that interfered?
> When a demonstration of interference is conducted with a spring and filmed,
> it is clear that that while the two waves with opposite displacement cancel
> each other for a brief moment, energy is present in the spring at the nodal
> point.
>
> Is there corresponding stored energy when light interferes destructively?
>
> Charlie Bissell
> Hillsdale High School
>
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