Second-year medical student Bettina Teng has been published in the September issue of The Physics Teacher. The research paper is “A Simple Way to Teach Single Slit Diffraction Based on Edge Diffraction.”
This is the introduction:
"Young’s experiment is hailed as a milestone in ushering a new understanding of the wave nature of light and is even taught at the high school level. Unfortunately, even the most cursory presentation of the subject of diffraction becomes confusing. The theory and equations based on Fresnel’s work appear arcane and incomprehensible to a high school student. In addition, students are not taught the significance of a phenomenon that has been observed since the time of Thomas Young: the bright band of light at the center of every single slit diffraction pattern. This paper presents a simple way to introduce the subject of diffraction based on Thomas Young’s original work and explains how the interplay of different components of diffracted waves from a single slit creates the broad central maximum."
Her co-authors were Peter Teng, M.D., Ph.D., her father and initial mentor for this project; and Charles Hennekens, M.D., Dr.PH, who became her mentor once she began undergraduate studies at the Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University.
(Earlier, News of the Week reported that Teng's paper would be published in May, but publication was delayed.)
