Andres Ramos Posted January 20, 2021 Share Posted January 20, 2021 Beam splitters in laser application are expensive and hard to obtain. Diffraction gratings instead are cheap and easy to get. In some setups they could replace beam splitters. YouCut_20210120_1423373431.mp4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christine Brooks Posted January 22, 2021 Share Posted January 22, 2021 Could defractors be made of crystals? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andres Ramos Posted January 22, 2021 Author Share Posted January 22, 2021 6 hours ago, Chris said: Could defractors be made of crystals? Hi Chris. Principally they are. The crystal lattice of atoms is working as a defraction grating itself. However the density if the grid is bound to the wavelength of the light. Because in a crystal the lattice is much "smaller" or "narrower" than in the defractor foil I showed in my video you would need "light" with a shorter wavelength to create the same defraction pattern with crystals. Therefore x-rays are used since they have much shorter wavelength. In fact x-ray diffraction patterns were used to analyze the crystalline structure of organic molecules like the DNA. Another issue with crystals is that you only get good defraction patterns if the crystal has grown homogeneously. All naturally grown crystals are inhomogeneous because the crystallization process was suffering from various disturbances that are causing variations in density, enclosing of artifacts or different chemical components. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.