incandescent light

[josephcollins]

hi ppl,
I was wondering. In a double slit experiment, we fire light rays through two slits using two incandescent lamps. Would the interference phenomenon be observed? I thought no, is it to do with the wavelength of incandescent light being outside the spectrum? Could someone help with this problem, thanks

[$id]

It would hard to get an interference pattern because the direction of the field would be changing constantly. The relative phase must be same hence it only works with 1 lamp.

As far as I know its nothing to do with the wavelength, just the fact that the field is not polarised.

[Diane_]

Well, there's also the fact that light from an incandescent lamp is not monochromatic. You might get interference patterns from various different frequencies, but I expect they'd overlap to such an extent that they'd be invisible.