Chapter 26, Problem 59GP

A physics student performs Young’s double-slit experiment with a collection of slits of varying separations He illuminates each in turn with laser light of unknown wavelength and measures the horizontal distance between the central bright fringe and the m = 3 bright fringe on a screen that is 2 m away. His measurements are given in the table

Slit separation (mm)	y (mm)
0.20	13.2
0.15	17.7
0.10	26.5
0.07	37.9
0.05	53.0

Make a plot of the fringe separation as a function of the inverse slit separation. Using a linear “best fit” to the data, determine the wavelength of the laser in units of nm.