Physics HL IA (7)

Introduction

Learning about diffraction patterns in physics class, I realized that I could finally find the answer to the question that I’ve been curious about since I was a kid. When I was little, I often found myself playing with a red laser pointer and I would try to observe different features on it. During my observations, I learned that the light bent less in the corners when I got closer to the corner and it bent more when I moved away. Then, I could not find a clear answer to why, so I searched about “light bending around corners” on the internet. I found out that light can be described as a wave, the ability of light to bend around corners is known as diffraction, and diffraction is a property that all types of waves have1. However, this was not enough to answer my question completely, and I forgot about it as time passed. Recently, learning about diffraction and how the aperture size and wavelength affect diffraction, I decided to investigate the relationship between the amount of diffraction and distance for myself.

This led to the research question: How is the length between maximum and minima intensity dependent on the distance between the slit and the screen?