Talk:Young's interference experiment
![]() | This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||
|
Content
editThe title of this article shows it is about the piece of equipment called Young's interferometer. The famous experiment performed by Young is covered by another article called Double-slit experiment.
So far, this article appears to be focussing on Young's experiment rather than his equipment. That puts this article at risk of being re-directed to, or merged with, Double-slit experiment, or even deleted. To successfully withstand a challenge, this article needs to focus much more on Young's interferometer, and much less on his double-slit experiment. Dolphin (t) 05:22, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
The Double slit article is primarily a discusssion of the problems that inteference appears to cause in quantum mechanics when you start thinking about light as particles, or electrons as waves, and only mentions Young's experiment in passing. Someone is currently working on a major revision which makes this clearer - see the discussion. In my view, it should be re-named 'Double-slit interference (quantum mechanics)', but making such suggestions seems to tread on a lot of toes, so I would prefer to avoid doing so at the moment.
This article is about the historical context of Young's experiment - the fact that Young showed that you get interference effects with light just as you do with water waves, thereby demonstrating that Newtons particle theory of light must be wrong, which I beleive merits an article of its own.
I am currently developing a general article about diffraction which will include an analysis of the classical optics explanation of double slit interference which should link well into both articles
Perhaps I will re-name it as 'Young's interference experiment' since the double slit bit is not of particular importance.Epzcaw (talk) 17:36, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
File:Ebohr1.svg
editThere is a slight error in the interference pattern of this drawing. The central fringe should be bright band instead of dark band. I have made a new drawing shown at right which has the correct interference pattern. If no one objects, I would replace the incorrect drawing with correct drawing next week. --LaoChen (talk)06:22, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
"Acceptance of the wave theory of light" section
editThis section sounds emotional, almost passive-aggressive. I would edit, but I don't believe I know enough about the subject matter to do it justice. Dunchr22 (talk) 03:29, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Unclear Language
editThis
"Instead, the sunlight reflected off a steering mirror passed through a small hole in a paper, and the resulting thin light beam was then split in half alongside a paper card."
is unclear. What does "split in half alongside" mean? Better: "the resulting thin light beam was then split by a paper card held edge on to it so that some light passed on each side."
A drawing would help tremendously.