The Nature of Light

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INTRODUCTION
Invisibility was one the most sought after abilities and fantasies from the Invisible Man, and Harry Potter to the Predator movies; it featured significantly in science fiction. In reading the article, ‘Scientists create invisibility cloak’, it can be seen that the ability continues to be sought by scientists today. To try and achieve this researchers are looking at and deepening their understanding of the nature of light. The modern research carried out are elaborations of the work done by Thomas Young and Francesco Grimaldi who’s work formed the foundations of our current understanding of the nature of light.

Figure 2
(Science Blogs, 2013)
Backround Research
Waves and Interference
Wave motion is said to be the most common type of motion; it’s the cause of sound reaching our ears, light reaching our eyes and electromagnetic waves to our radios and televisions, along with disasters such as tidal waves and earthquakes. Wave motion can be defined as a, “…mechanism by which energy is transported from a source to a distant receiver without the transfer of matter between the two points” (Besancon, 1990) and are classified by how they are produced, for example, a vibrating material or an electrical oscillations in an aerial. The most important classification involves a medium’s direction of motion (a medium is a substance that the wave is travelling through) or in the case of electromagnetic waves the direction of motion of the electric or magnetic field. This direction is in reference to the direction of energy in the wave itself. (Besancon, 1990)
Wave motion can be considered as one of two types of motion; longitudinal motion and transversal motion. In transversal motion the movement is in an up and down motion or ve...

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