the.com/diffraction
the universe's reminder that waves refuse to walk in straight lines around corners
means the bending and spreading of waves—light, sound, water—as they pass an edge or squeeze through an opening, often fanning into patterns of bright and dark bands.
from From Latin 'diffractus,' the past participle of 'diffringere,' meaning 'to break in pieces'—'dis-' (apart) plus 'frangere' (to break, the same root behind 'fracture' and 'fragment'). The Italian Jesuit Francesco Grimaldi coined the scientific sense in the 17th century when he noticed light skirting an obstacle and seeming to splinter at its edge—as if the beam itself had been broken apart by the corner it grazed.
- bending light
- Waves curve around obstacles smaller than their wavelength
- CD rainbows
- Disc colors come from grooves diffracting light
- DNA reveal
- X-ray diffraction exposed DNA's double helix in 1953
- hard limit
- It caps how sharp any telescope can ever see
- everyday proof
- Squint through eyelashes and streetlights split apart
double slit experiment — thomas young's 1801 demonstration of light diffraction creating interference patterns
diffraction grating — optical device with thousands of parallel slits used in spectrometers to separate light wavelengths
x-ray crystallography — rosalind franklin's 1952 photo 51 using diffraction to reveal dna's helical structure