Let us list some of the factors, which could possibly influence the speed of wave propagation:
(i) Nature of the source.
(ii) Direction of propagation.
(iii) Motion of the source and/or observer.
(iv) Wave length.
(v) Intensity of the wave.
On which of these factors, if any, does
(a) The speed of light in vacuum,
(b) The speed of light in a medium (say, glass or water), depend?
(a) Speed of light in vacuum is an absolute constant, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity. It does not depend upon any of the factors listed above or any other factor.
(b) The speed of light in a medium like water or glass
(i) does not depend upon the nature of the source.
(ii) does not depend upon the direction of propagation, when the medium is isotropic.
(iii) does not depend upon motion of the source w.r.t the medium, but depends on motion of the observer relative to the medium.
(iv) depends on wavelength of light, being lesser for shorter wavelength and vice-versa.
(v) does not depend upon intensity of light.
Monochromatic light of wavelength 589 nm is incident from air on a water surface. What are the wavelength, frequency and speed of
(a) reflected, and
(b) refracted light? Refractive index of water is 1.33.
What is the shape of the wavefront in each of the following cases:
(a) Light diverging from a point source.
(b) Light emerging out of a convex lens when a point source is placed at its focus.
(c) The portion of the wavefront of light from a distant star intercepted by the Earth.
In double-slit experiment using light of wavelength 600 nm, the angular width of a fringe formed on a distant screen is 0.1o. What is the spacing between the two slits?
Light of wavelength 5000 Å falls on a plane reflecting surface. What are the wavelength and frequency of the reflected light? For what angle of incidence is the reflected ray normal to the incident ray?
A beam of light consisting of two wavelengths, 650 nm and 520 nm, is used to obtain interference fringes in a Young’s double-slit experiment.
(a) Find the distance of the third bright fringe on the screen from the central maximum for wavelength 650 nm.
(b) What is the least distance from the central maximum where the bright fringes due to both the wavelengths coincide?
Estimate the distance for which ray optics is good approximation for an aperture of 4 mm and wavelength 400 nm.
In Young’s double-slit experiment using monochromatic light of wavelength λ, the intensity of light at a point on the screen where path difference is λ, is K units. What is the intensity of light at a point where path difference is λ /3?
In a Young’s double-slit experiment, the slits are separated by 0.28 mm and the screen is placed 1.4 m away. The distance between the central bright fringe and the fourth bright fringe is measured to be 1.2 cm. Determine the wavelength of light used in the experiment.
A parallel beam of light of wavelength 500 nm falls on a narrow slit and the resulting diffraction pattern is observed on a screen 1 m away. It is observed that the first minimum is at a distance of 2.5 mm from the centre of the screen. Find the width of the slit.
What is the Brewster angle for air to glass transition? (Refractive index of glass = 1.5.)
Answer the following questions regarding earth's magnetism:
(a) A vector needs three quantities for its specification. Name the three independent quantities conventionally used to specify the earth's magnetic field.
(b) The angle of dip at a location in southern India is about 18º.
Would you expect a greater or smaller dip angle in Britain?
(c) If you made a map of magnetic field lines at Melbourne in Australia, would the lines seem to go into the ground or come out of the ground?
(d) In which direction would a compass free to move in the vertical plane point to, if located right on the geomagnetic north or south pole?
(e) The earth's field, it is claimed, roughly approximates the field due to a dipole of magnetic moment 8 x 1022 J T-1 located at its centre. Check the order of magnitude of this number in some way.
(f ) Geologists claim that besides the main magnetic N-S poles, there are several local poles on the earth's surface oriented in different directions. How is such a thing possible at all?
(a) Two stable isotopes of lithium 6Li3 and7Li3 have respective abundances of 7.5% and 92.5%. These isotopes have masses 6.01512 u and 7.01600 u, respectively. Find the atomic mass of lithium.
(b) Boron has two stable isotopes, 10B5 and 11B5 . Their respective masses are 10.01294 u and 11.00931 u, and the atomic mass of boron is 10.811 u. Find the abundances of 10B5 and 11B5.
A small candle, 2.5 cm in size is placed at 27 cm in front of a concave mirror of radius of curvature 36 cm. At what distance from the mirror should a screen be placed in order to obtain a sharp image? Describe the nature and size of the image. If the candle is moved closer to the mirror, how would the screen have to be moved?
Figure 8.6 shows a capacitor made of two circular plates each of radius 12 cm, and separated by 5.0 cm. The capacitor is being charged by an external source (not shown in the figure). The charging current is constant and equal to 0.15 A.
(a) Calculate the capacitance and the rate of charge of potential difference between the plates.
(b) Obtain the displacement current across the plates.
(c) Is Kirchhoff’s first rule (junction rule) valid at each plate of the capacitor? Explain.
What is the force between two small charged spheres having charges of 2 x 10-7 C and 3 x 10-7 C placed 30 cm apart in air?
Two charges 5 x 10-8 C and -3 x 10-8 C are located 16 cm apart. At what point(s) on the line joining the two charges is the electric potential zero? Take the potential at infinity to be zero.
A silver wire has a resistance of 2.1 Ω at 27.5 °C, and a resistance of 2.7 Ω at 100 °C. Determine the temperature coefficient of resistivity of silver.
In a parallel plate capacitor with air between the plates, each plate has an area of 6 x 10-3 m2 and the distance between the plates is 3 mm. Calculate the capacitance of the capacitor. If this capacitor is connected to a 100 V supply, what is the charge on each plate of the capacitor?
Figure shows a potentiometer with a cell of 2.0 V and internal resistance 0.40 Ω maintaining a potential drop across the resistor wire AB. A standard cell which maintains a constant emf of 1.02 V (for very moderate currents up to a few mA) gives a balance point at 67.3 cm length of the wire. To ensure very low currents drawn from the standard cell, a very high resistance of 600 kΩ is put in series with it, which is shorted close to the balance point. The standard cell is then replaced by a cell of unknown emf Ωµ and the balance point found similarly, turns out to be at 82.3 cm length of the wire.
(a) What is the value Ωµ ?
(b) What purpose does the high resistance of 600 kΩ have?
(c) Is the balance point affected by this high resistance?
(d) Is the balance point affected by the internal resistance of the driver cell?
(e) Would the method work in the above situation if the driver cell of the potentiometer had an emf of 1.0 V instead of 2.0 V?
(f ) Would the circuit work well for determining an extremely small emf, say of the order of a few mV (such as the typical emf of a thermo-couple)? If not, how will you modify the circuit?
A heating element using nichrome connected to a 230 V supply draws an initial current of 3.2 A which settles after a few seconds to a steady value of 2.8 A. What is the steady temperature of the heating element if the room temperature is 27.0 °C? Temperature coefficient of resistance of nichrome averaged over the temperature range involved is 1.70 x 10-4 °C -1.
Determine the current drawn from a 12 V supply with internal resistance 0.5 Ω by the infinite network shown in Fig. 3.32. Each resistor has 1 Ω resistance.
A 12 pF capacitor is connected to a 50V battery. How much electrostatic energy is stored in the capacitor?
In accordance with the Bohr’s model, find the quantum number that characterises the earth’s revolution around the sun in an orbit of radius 1.5 × 1011 m with orbital speed 3 × 104 m/s. (Mass of earth = 6.0 × 1024 kg.)
The work function of caesium metal is 2.14 eV. When light of frequency 6 ×1014 Hz is incident on the metal surface, photoemission of electrons occurs. What is the
(a) maximum kinetic energy of the emitted electrons,
(b) Stopping potential, and
(c) maximum speed of the emitted photoelectrons?
Figure shows a 2.0 V potentiometer used for the determination of internal resistance of a 1.5 V cell. The balance point of the cell in open circuit is 76.3 cm. When a resistor of 9.5 Ω is used in the external circuit of the cell, the balance point shifts to 64.8 cm length of the potentiometer wire. Determine the internal resistance of the cell.
(a) Consider an arbitrary electrostatic field configuration. A small test charge is placed at a null point (i.e., where E = 0) of the configuration. Show that the equilibrium of the test charge is necessarily unstable.
(b) Verify this result for the simple configuration of two charges of the same magnitude and sign placed a certain distance apart.