Question

What is a wavefront? What is the direction of a beam of light with respect to the associated wavefront? State the Huygens’ principle and explain the propagation of light waves.

Answer 1

Answer:

Huygen's Principle. It states that each point of the wavefront is the source of the secondary wavelets which spread out in all direction with the speed of a wave. So if we consider a point source, it will emit its wavefront and nature of the wavefront will be spherical one.

Answer 2

Wavefront and Huygen's principle

Wave front:

• A wave front is described as a floor over which the segment of the wave is constant.
• In a selected wave front, at a given second of time, all debris of the medium are present process the equal motion.
• Two kinds of wave fronts are especially important. They are plane wave fronts and spherical wave fronts.

Direction of beam light:

The direction of a beam of light with respect to the associated wavefront is perpendicular or 90 degree to the wave front.

Huygen's principle:

• The Huygen's principle specifies that "every point on a wave front may be considered as a source of secondary waves".
• The phrase interference is used to explain the superposition of  waves, while diffraction is interference produced through numerous waves.