Complete Question
One day, after pulling down your window shade, you notice that sunlight is passing through a pinhole in the shade and making a small patch of light on the far wall. Having recently studied optics in your physics class, you're not too surprised to see that the patch of light seems to be a circular diffraction pattern. It appears that the central maximum is about 2 cm across, and you estimate that the distance from the window shade to the wall is about 5 m.
Required:
Estimate the diameter of the pinhole.
Answer:
The diameter is
Explanation:
From the question we are told that
The central maxima is
The distance from the window shade is
The average wavelength of the sun is mathematically evaluated as
Generally the visible light spectrum has a wavelength range between 400 nm to 700 nm
So the initial wavelength of the sun is
and the final wavelength is
Substituting this into the above equation
The diameter is evaluated as
substituting values