Thomas Young And Young's Double-Slit Experiment

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Recommended: The contribution of Isaac Newton to the study of physics

Before the turn of the century in 1800, scientists were content to believe that light was made up of tiny particles. Isaac Newton was the first to propose the particle theory of light. He explained that we are able to perceive the objects around us when light particles ricochet off objects and enter our eyes. It wasn’t until 1803 when the English scientist, Thomas Young, first challenged this theory. Instead, Young believed that light was a wave phenomenon just like sound. He developed a new experiment, now referred to as Young’s Double-Slit Experiment, to test his hypothesis. The results of Young’s experiment were extremely important, proving that light has both wave and particle characteristics, called wave-particle duality.
Thomas Young knew that sound was a wave which resembled a ripple of water. He also knew that when two sound waves with the same intensity (the power transferred over an area) reached a particular point at the same time, the sound would “cancel” itself out at unique places. For instance, if a pair of identical sound waves (at different starting positions) reache...

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