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Q.i) State Huygens' principle. What do you mean by coherent source? ii) In Young's double slit experiment fringes are produced due to light of wavelength 6000 Å on a screen 80 cm away from the source. If the distance between two coherent sources is 0·02 cm, then calculate the separation of 9th bright fringe from 2nd dark fringe.

West Bengal WbchseWest Bengal HS (WBCHSE) Board 2026Subjective· 5mImportance★★★★★
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(i) Huygens: each point of a wavefront emits secondary wavelets whose forward envelope is the next wavefront; coherent sources have the same frequency and a fixed phase relation. (ii) The gap between the 9th bright and 2nd dark fringe = 7.5lambdaD/d = 1.8 cm.

(i) Huygens' principle: Every point on a given wavefront acts as a fresh source of secondary disturbances (secondary wavelets) which spread out in the forward direction with the speed of the wave in that medium. The new position of the wavefront after a short time is the surface that touches (the forward envelope of) all these secondary wavelets.

Coherent sources: two sources are coherent if they emit waves of the same frequency (and wavelength) and maintain a constant (time-independent) phase difference between them. Only coherent sources produce a steady, observable interference pattern.

(ii) Young's double-slit calculation. Given: lambda = 6000 A = 6 x 10^-7 m; D = 80 cm = 0.8 m; d = 0.02 cm = 2 x 10^-4 m.

Position of the n-th bright fringe: y(bright) = nlambdaD/d.

9th bright fringe: y1 = 9lambdaD/d.

Position of the m-th dark fringe: y(dark) = (2m - 1)lambdaD/(2d).

2nd dark fringe (m = 2): y2 = (3/2)lambdaD/d = 1.5lambdaD/d.

Separation between the 9th bright and 2nd dark fringe (both measured on the same side of the central maximum): …

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