A modern twist on Young's slits
Friday, April 11, 2014 - 10:53
in Physics & Chemistry
A landmark experiment on wave interference from the early 1800s is revisited using gold nanoparticles. In the eighteenth century, scientists faced a conundrum: is light a wave or a particle? One of strongest pieces of evidence to support the 'wave view' -- the landmark double-slit experiment -- was reported in 1804 by the scientist Thomas Young. Young passed coherent light through two closely spaced slits and observed a set of interference fringes, a result that occurs with wave phenomena like sound or water. This observation became the basis for the modern wave theory of light.