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Physics IV Report
Physics IV Report
Light
MODULE 57
EFFECTS OF
MATERIALS ON
LIGHT
How does a material respond
when light is incident upon
it?
Different materials respond differently when
struck by light.
Clear plastic bags
- allow light to pass through them in straight
lines.
Green leaf
- absorb all the light that strikes it but reflects
the green wavelength.
Wax paper
- allow light to pass through them, except that
the light becomes scattered.
Light may be:
Transmitted
Reflected
Absorbed or
Scattered as it
strikes a material.
These phenomena are influenced by the
nature of the material which light strikes.
Opaque materials
- materials that absorb light waves that fall on
them.
- brick, wood and metal
Transparent materials
- materials that transmit light waves and permit objects
to be seen clearly through them.
- ex. Glass and some plastics
Translucent materials
- allow light to be transmitted through them but its rays
are distorted during the passage
- ex. Lampshades, wax paper and frosted glass
REFLECTION
Reflection
- what you see when you look at an object depends on how its
surface reflects light.
Diffuse Reflection
- light that is reflected by a rough-textured or uneven surface such
as a wall, paper and cloth is scattered in many different directions.
- allows us to see objects from any angle.
angle of
deviation
prism
angle of
dispersion
Spectrum
- the beam splits into the different range of
colors
Color Wavelength (m) Frequency (Hz)
Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Violet
Constructive Interference
- where waves from two slits arrive in phase and reinforce
each other.
- bright fringes
Destructive interference
- where the waves cancel each other out.
- dark fringes
DIFFRACTION
Young’s double-slit experiment
- shows the spreading out of light when
passing through a small slit or around sharp
edges or corners because of diffraction
Diffraction
- is a demonstration of Huygens’ principle which
states that every point on any wavefront of light
from a point source may be regarded as a new
point source of secondary waves.
When a wavefront reaches the edge
of a corner, a secondary wave is
formed at that point and makes
another wavefront.
SCATTERING OF
LIGHT
Atmosphere
- mixture of gases (such as nitrogen, and oxygen),
droplets of water, and solid particles (like dust, soot,
ashes, pollen, salt from ocean and pollutants).
- it’s thickness varies, depending upon your location
- it is densest (thickest) near the earth and gradually
thins out as you go higher.
Rayleigh scattering
- light travels in straight lines as long as nothing
disturbs it. As light moves through the atmosphere, it
bumps into bits of solid particle or gas molecules and
becomes scattered in all directions.
- named after Lord John Rayleigh
- first discovered in the 1870s