You stand on a straight desert road at night and observe a vehicle approaching. This vehicle is equipped with two small headlights that are 0.635 m apart. At what distance, in kilometers, are you marginally able to discern that there are two headlights rather than a single light source? Take the wavelength of the light to be 537 nm and your pupil diameter to be 5.17 mm.

You stand on a straight desert road at night and observe a vehicle approaching. This vehicle is equipped with two small headlights that are 0.635 m apart. At what distance, in kilometers, are you marginally able to discern that there are two headlights rather than a single light source? Take the wavelength of the light to be 537 nm and your pupil diameter to be 5.17 mm.

Principles of Physics: A Calculus-Based Text

5th Edition

ISBN:9781133104261

Author:Raymond A. Serway, John W. Jewett

Publisher:Raymond A. Serway, John W. Jewett

Chapter27: Wave Optics

Section: Chapter Questions

Problem 23P: A beam of 580-nm light passes through two closely spaced glass plates at close to normal incidence...

See similar textbooks

Similar questions

In a Newtons-rings experiment, a plano-convex glass (n = 1.52) lens having radius r = 5.00 cm is placed on a flat plate as shown in Figure P36.37. When light of wavelength = 650 nm is incident normally, 55 bright rings are observed, with the last one precisely on the edge of the lens. (a) What is the radius R of curvature of the convex surface of the lens? (b) What is the focal length of the lens? Figure P36.37
A beam of 580-nm light passes through two closely spaced glass plates at close to normal incidence as shown in Figure P27.23. For what minimum nonzero value of the plate separation d is the transmitted light bright?
The two headlights on an on-coming car are 1.40 m apart. At what distance (in km) will an eye with pupil diameter of 4.30 mm be able to resolve the two headlights? Assume a wavelength of 517 nm for the light.
A telescope is used to view two stars that are about 9.36 light-years away and emit light with an average wavelength of 570nm. If the aperture of the telescope has a diameter of 1.8m. what is the minimum separation of the stars so that they can be distinguished as two separate objects?
Newton’s rings are formed by light reflected normally from a plano convex lens and a plane glass plate with liquid between them. The diameter of nth ring is 2.18 mm and that of (n+10)th ring is 4.51 mm. Calculate the RI of the liquid, given that the radius of curvature of the lens is 90 cm and wavelength of light is 5893 A° options 1.36 1.46 1.26 1.56
A plano-convex lens rests with its curved side on a flat glass surface and is illuminated from above by light of wavelength 464 nm. A dark spot is observed at the center, surrounded by 19 concentric dark rings (with bright rings in between). How much thicker is the air wedge at the position of the 19th dark ring than at the center? 2.41 um 2.97 um 3.77 um 4.41 um
Parallel rays of green mercury light with a wavelength of 546 nm pass through a slit covering a convex lens with a focal length of 60 cm. In the focal plane of the lens, the distance from the central maximum to the first minimum is 10.2 mm. What must be the width of this slit?
Starting from a point A, a light wave travels 30 mm in air, then 10 mm in water of refractive index nW=1.33 , followed by 10 mm in glass of refractive index nG=1.60 , then a further 20mm in air to point B. The optical path length from A to B is: (give your answer in mm to 1 d.p.)
A vehicle with headlights separated by 2.00 m approaches an observer holding an infrared detector sensitive to radiation of wavelength 885 nm. What aperture diameter is required in the detector if the two headlights are to be resolved at a distance of 10.0 km?
The light from a krypton laser has a wavelength of 647.1 nm in air. As the light travels from air into acrylic glass (n =1.491), calculate (a) its speed in acrylic glass, (b) its wavelength in acrylic glass, (c) its critical angle in acrylic glass surrounded by air, and (d) its frequency.
Astronomers observe a 60.0 MHz radio source both directly and by reflection from the sea as shown in Figure P37.7. If the receiving dish is 20.0 m above sea level, what is the angle of the radio source above the horizon at the first maximum?
is the minimum separation of 2 small sources of red lights on Earth that you can resolve by eye when you are flying 3.0 km above the ground? Assume the light's wavelength in air is 633 nm, the index of refraction inside the eye is 1.333 and a pupil diameter of 4.00 mm.