Diffraction is the splitting of a beam of light which can be caused by passing it through a diffraction apparatus. This image shows a laser beam being projected onto a Styrofoam slab. The laser beam passes through a diffraction grating of 300 lines per millimetre. Passing through the grating causes the beam to split into multiple beams. These beams are then projected on the Styrofoam slab as the original beam was to create this image. The difficulty of creating this image lies in the set up of the image. The most difficult part was getting the laser beam to show up on the Styrofoam slab. The height of the slab had to be adjusted many times in correlation with the laser to get the beam to show up. Once that was taken care of, the strength of the beam had to be adjusted to get the optimal brightness to show up on the slab.

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Sahil Kesar
Emery Collegiate Institute, North York, ON
First Prize ( High School Class Category )

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