To see where the idea for this wild set of photos got started, check out my previous August post "Fun With Mirrors". I wonder if I could get a red laser in there too...hmmm...
Cool. I particularly like the diffraction patterns in the second picture. If you look closely at each of the green dots, you see that they're broken up into a bunch of smaller dots in the pattern of a hexagonal grid. This results (if I'm interpreting the picture correctly) from interference between the rays of light that reflect off the front surface of the glass, and those that reflect off the silver at the back. There's a phase difference between these two kinds of rays. At some angles, it causes the light to add up to something brighter than the sum of the parts; at other angles the two kinds of ray are completely out of phase and cancel each other out. The result is this complicated pattern that (with enough analysis) can actually say a surprising amount about the geometrical structure of the situation. For example, Rosalind Franklin first inferred the double helix structure of the DNA molecule from diffraction patterns like this.
Cool. I particularly like the diffraction patterns in the second picture. If you look closely at each of the green dots, you see that they're broken up into a bunch of smaller dots in the pattern of a hexagonal grid. This results (if I'm interpreting the picture correctly) from interference between the rays of light that reflect off the front surface of the glass, and those that reflect off the silver at the back. There's a phase difference between these two kinds of rays. At some angles, it causes the light to add up to something brighter than the sum of the parts; at other angles the two kinds of ray are completely out of phase and cancel each other out. The result is this complicated pattern that (with enough analysis) can actually say a surprising amount about the geometrical structure of the situation. For example, Rosalind Franklin first inferred the double helix structure of the DNA molecule from diffraction patterns like this.
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