Brasil Final Report - Department of Physics - The Ohio State University

ight regions on screen
“light that passes
through without
bending”
light “bending”
to other regions
on screen
30
(a) (b)
If equal [slit width and amplitude],
no diffraction would occur
(c)
Illuminated region of the screen
Mask with
1-cm wide slit
Small bulb
“Photons [that]
bend off a little bit”
If [slit width is] less,
then no light would pass
Figure 3: (a) Sketch by student who treated central bright region as geometric image and diffraction fringes
as resulting from light bending at edges of slit. (b) Sketch by a modern physics student who
believed that photons travel on straight paths that “bend” near the edges of a slit. (c) Sketch by
student who treated light as a wave with an amplitude that is a spatial quantity.