Additional Info

• ID Code: L2-21
• Purpose: Illustrate a half-silvered mirror.
• Description:
  The optical board is set up with a mutli-slit baffle, a collimating lens, and a partially silvered mirror. Light from the point source passes through a slit baffle and is collimated into a series of parallel rays by a convex lens. When the rays hit the partially-silvered mirror, some of the light is reflected and some passes through the mirror.

  Background

  This effect of partial reflection is often used as a bean splitter, splitting a single beam of light to follow two different paths. In this application, it may be used as a part of an interferometer, which measures very small changes in distance by looking at how the two light waves go in and out of phase with each other.
• Availability: Available
• References: REFERENCES: (PIRA unknown.)