Chapter 10: Wave Optics
NCERT Class 12 Physics, Part II, Chapter 10. 6 lessons, 14 narrated 3D videos, 6 simulations and 12 quiz questions, following the textbook section by section.
- Wavefronts and Huygens’ principleIs light a stream of tiny particles, or a wave? Newton favoured particles, which he called corpuscles. In 1678, the Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens put forward the…
- Reflection and refraction with Huygens’ principleA plane wavefront AB travels in medium 1 and meets the boundary with medium 2 at an angle i. The speed of light is v₁ in medium 1 and v₂ in medium 2.
- Coherent and incoherent addition of wavesTake two needles, S₁ and S₂, and move them up and down together in a shallow trough of water. Each needle sends out circular ripples of the same wavelength.
- Interference and Young’s experimentIn 1801, Thomas Young made two coherent sources of light out of one. Light from a source S falls on two narrow pinholes, S₁ and S₂, very close together in an opaque…
- DiffractionLook very closely at the shadow of a sharp edge, like a razor blade, in a narrow beam of light. The edge of the shadow is not sharp. Near it there are faint bright and…
- PolarisationShake one end of a long string up and down. A transverse wave runs along it, and every point of the string moves only up and down, in one plane. Such a wave is called…