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3.5 Exercise 32

Avg difficulty 2.5

A good quality camera “lens” is actually a system of lenses, rather than a single lens, but a side effect is that a reflection from the surface of one lens can bounce around many times within the system, creating artifacts in the photograph. To counteract this problem, one of the lenses in such a system is coated with a thin layer of material (n=1.28n = 1.28) on one side. The index of refraction of the lens glass is 1.68. What is the smallest thickness of the coating that reduces the reflection at 640 nm by destructive interference? (In other words, the coating’s effect is to be optimized for λ=640nm\lambda = 640 \text{nm}.)

OpenStax University Physics Volume 3, 3.5 The Michelson Interferometer, exercise 32

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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.