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3 Laser
2 spheres later
Having already used an expensive piece of equipment to measure the wavelength of light with my Leaving Cert. class, I looked forward to revisiting the same experiment using such an inexpensive laser. The diffraction grating we used had 300 lines per mm. So we set up a screen with a metre stick across it and placed the grating about one metre from the screen before turning on the laser. Interference pattern on metre stick Another attraction of this laser is that you dont have to keep the button pressed (as in the spot laser). You can turn it on and off, simply by pressing a button. We then moved the metre stick to fix the central order at the 50 cm mark, located the other orders and noted their positions on the metre stick. We subsequently measured the distance from the first order image on the left (31.9 cm mark) to the first order image on the right (68.3 cm mark).
There are a number of physics concepts involved in this demonstration, but the main one Id like to highlight is the greater absorption of energy by a black body. The two spheres have to be good conductors and painting metal balls with white and black paint might not be the most satisfactory in terms of achieving the desired result. Anodized surfaces work quite well. Eskimos, I believe, used this technique to drill holes in ice for fishing. However, instead of a black ball, I believe that they used dog dung.
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