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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.
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