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From a book published in 1807 relating lectures given by Young in 1802 to London's Royal Institution. While studying medicine at Göttingen in the 1790s, Young wrote a thesis on the physical and mathematical properties of sound [4] and in 1800, he presented a paper to the Royal Society (written in 1799) where he argued that light was also a wave motion.
Young's drawing of diffraction. When Thomas Young (1773–1829) first demonstrated this phenomenon, it indicated that light consists of waves, as the distribution of brightness can be explained by the alternately additive and subtractive interference of wavefronts. [9]
Thomas Young FRS (13 June 1773 – 10 May 1829) was a British polymath who made notable contributions to the fields of vision, light, solid mechanics, energy, physiology, language, musical harmony, and Egyptology.
Thomas Young's sketch of two-slit diffraction for water ripple tank from his 1807 Lectures [6]: 139 . The effects of diffraction of light were first carefully observed and characterized by Francesco Maria Grimaldi, who also coined the term diffraction, from the Latin diffringere, 'to break into pieces', referring to light breaking up into different directions. [7]
Thomas Young published his double-slit experiment in 1807. [9] The original Arago spot experiment was carried out a decade later and was the deciding experiment on the question of whether light is a particle or a wave. It is thus an example of an experimentum crucis.
Thomas Young's double slit interferometer in 1803 demonstrated interference fringes when two small holes were illuminated by light from another small hole which was illuminated by sunlight. Young was able to estimate the wavelength of different colours in the spectrum from the spacing of the fringes.
In 1801, Thomas Young provided the first explanation of constructive and destructive interference. Young's contribution went largely unnoticed until the work of Augustin Fresnel, who helped to establish the wave theory of light in 1816. [6]
[1] [2]: 328 The quantum eraser experiment is a variation of Thomas Young's classic double-slit experiment. It establishes that when action is taken to determine which of two slits a photon has passed through, the photon cannot interfere with itself.