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3.4 Exercise 19

Avg difficulty 2.5

To save money on making military aircraft invisible to radar, an inventor decides to coat them with a nonreflective material having an index of refraction of 1.20, which is between that of air and the surface of the plane. This, he reasons, should be much cheaper than designing Stealth bombers. (a) What thickness should the coating be to inhibit the reflection of 4.00-cm wavelength radar? (b) What is unreasonable about this result? (c) Which assumptions are unreasonable or inconsistent?

OpenStax University Physics Volume 3, 3.4 Interference in Thin Films, exercise 19

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Adapted from University Physics Volume 3 © 2016 Rice University. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Source: University Physics Volume 3. Imported at revision db44eb9.