Young's Double Slit

In 1801, British Physicist Thomas Young conducted an experiment that gave conclusive experimental evidence to the wave nature of light.

He passed coherent light through two slits and observed a series of bright and dark fringes that can only be explained by the constructive and destructive intereference of waves.

Huygens' Principle

Diffraction Grating

Return to Ch 25, Wave Optics: Interference and Diffraction

(c) Doug Davis, 2002; all rights reserved