PHYS130 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Diffraction Grating, James Clerk Maxwell, Double-Slit Experiment
12 Dec 2017
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If the amplitudes of two waves have the same sign. Either both positive or both negative, they will add together to form a wave with a larger amplitude. When two interfering waves have a displacement in the same direction (travelling towards each other), the result is a phenomenon called constructive interference (visually represented on figure 1). When two interfering waves have a displacement in the opposite direction (travelling away from each other), the result is a phenomenon called destructive interference (visually represented on figure. Thanks to the works of michael faraday, james clerk maxwell, albert einstein, and thomas young, we know that the aforementioned principles also apply to electromagnetic radiation; since light behaves as both- a particle and a wave. Diffraction refers to the various phenomena that occur when a wave encounters a barrier or a slit and bends around it into the geometrical shadow region of the barrier and produces an interference pattern.
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direction.
direction.
this new wave should have the same displacement as 
, the wave described in the problem introduction.
, where 
is the wave described in Part B. These waves have been chosen so that their sum can be written as follows:
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, called the envelope, depends only on position, and 
depends only on time. Traditionally, the time function is taken to be a trigonometric function with unit amplitude; that is, the overall amplitude of the wave is written as part of 