Building Young's Double-Slit Interference Experiment?

TucsonTed asks: "I am a student teacher, preapring for life as a middle or high school teacher. I'd like to build a working model of Young's Double-Slit experiment to show light's wave behavior. Anyone have info on where I can find some blueprints (size of slits, spacing, etc.?) I don't yet have access to a real lab, so I need the DIY approach. I can use monochromatic light or a laser. If you haven't come across this experiment, and its freakish implications at the quantum level, take a look. You may not sleep tonight." For those interested in the math behind this experiment, you might want to check this site.

Comments

A couple ideas...

[coyote-san]

A couple ideas....

1) Bolt two single-edge razor blades together, use them the draw parallel slits on smoked glass. It would probably not be wise to give middle-school students access to the blades... :-)

2) Bolt two single-edge razors blade-to-blade. One side can be fixed, the other adjusted by a screw. Instant variable size single slits, and you should be able to make this middle-school student safe.

3) Take out your trusty laser printer and print two vertical lines on a sheet of bright white paper. Photograph it with true B&W film (not that new "color process" junk), cut the film with your handly single-edge razor and install it in a 35mm slide holder.

4) Use the same technique to produce other fun patterns. E.g., besides single and double slits, gratings, etc., there's the starburst pattern where you alternate white and black wedges. Each wedge is 1/2 to 5 degrees wide. You *will* see weird printer artifacts, but you can minimize this by explicitly setting both black and white pixels. (Easy with postscript, I don't know about other tools.)