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Definition: diffraction from Philip's Encyclopedia

Spreading of a wave, such as a light beam, on passing through a narrow opening or hitting an obstacle, such as sound being heard around corners. It is evidence for the wave nature of light. Diffraction provides information on the wavelength of light and the structure of crystals.

diffraction

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
bending of waves around the edge of an obstacle. When light strikes an opaque body, for instance, a shadow forms on the side of the body that is shielded from the light source. Ordinarily light travels in straight lines through a uniform, transparent medium, but those light waves that just pass the edges of the opaque body are bent, or deflected. This diffraction produces a fuzzy border region between the shadow area and the lighted area. Upon close examination it can be seen that this border region is actually a series of alternate dark and light lines extending both slightly into the shadow area and slightly into the lighted area. If the observer looks for these patterns, he will find that they are not always sharp. However a sharp pattern can be produced if a single, distant light source, or a point light source, is used to cast a shadow behind an opaque body. Diffraction also occurs when light waves interact with a device called a diffraction grating. A diffraction grating may be…
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Full text Article diffraction

From Astronomy Encyclopedia
Slight spreading of a beam of light as it passes a sharp edge. If a beam of light strikes a hole, the beam that passes through the hole spreads slightly at the edges. A similar effect can be observed when waves in the sea hit the narrow opening of a harbour: as they pass into the harbour they begin…
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Full text Article Diffraction

From Feminist Philosophies A-Z
Donna Haraway (1997) develops diffraction in reaction to standard conceptions of reflexivity . She worries that because standard notions of reflexivity assume that one can recognise and identify one’s own cultural biases, one supposes a transparency of self that does not exist. This moves the…
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Full text Article diffraction

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
bending of waves around the edge of an obstacle. When light strikes an opaque body, for instance, a shadow forms on the side of the body that is shielded from the light source. Ordinarily light travels in straight lines through a uniform, transparent medium, but those light waves that just pass the…
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Full text Article diffraction

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
The spreading out of waves when they pass through a small gap or around a small object, resulting in some change in the direction of the waves. In order for this effect to be observed, the size of the object or gap must be comparable to or smaller than the wavelength of the waves. Diffraction occurs…
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Full text Article diffraction grating

From The Hutchinson Dictionary of Scientific Biography
Subject: physics Polished metallic surface (usually a metallic mirror on a block of glass or quartz) or plastic surface on which has been ruled a great number (in thousands) of thin, parallel lines with small gaps between them, used to split light to produce a spectrum. A beam of light travelling…
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Full text Article diffraction grating

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Polished metallic surface (usually a metallic mirror on a block of glass or quartz) or plastic surface on which has been ruled a great number (in thousands) of thin, parallel lines with small gaps between them, used to split light to produce a spectrum . A beam of light travelling through the narrow…
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Fraunhofer diffraction
Why can you never achieve a perfect camera image? Why is our own eyesight imperfect? Even the tiniest spot gets blurred because the light is smeared out as it passes through the eye or camera aperture. Fraunhofer diffraction describes this blurring for light rays reaching us from a distant…
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Full text Article diffraction grating

From The Penguin Dictionary of Physics
A device for producing spectra by diffraction and for the measurement of wavelength. Commonly it consists of a large number of equidistant parallel lines (of the order 7500 per cm) ruled with a diamond point on glass, speculum metal, or an evaporated layer of aluminium (ruled gratings) or of a…
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Full text Article diffract

From The Chambers Dictionary
to break up; to subject to diffraction. [L diffringere , diffrāctum , from dis- asunder, and frangere to break] n the spreading of light or other rays passing through a narrow opening or by the edge of an opaque body or reflected by a grating, etc, with interference phenomena, coloured and other. …
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Full text Article diffraction grating

From Collins Dictionary of Astronomy
A device usually incorporated into a spectrograph and employed in the production and study of spectra . Its action depends on the diffraction of light or other radiation by a very large number of very close and exactly equidistant parallel linear grooves. The grooves are produced by ruling very fine…
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