Cenois said:Does the distance between the maxima increase/decrease or stay the same when the slit separation is increased? when the slit width is increased? what about if it was minima?
thanks for any help to understand how this works.
Maxima and minima are points on a graph where the slope of the curve changes from positive to negative (maxima) or negative to positive (minima), indicating a change from increasing to decreasing or vice versa. In physics, these points represent the highest and lowest values of a physical quantity, such as velocity or energy.
Maxima and minima are used to analyze physical phenomena and make predictions about their behavior. For example, they can be used to determine the maximum height of a projectile or the minimum energy required for an electron to escape an atom.
The most commonly used methods for finding maxima and minima in physics are the first and second derivative tests. The first derivative test involves finding the critical points of a function and evaluating the slope at those points to determine whether they are maxima or minima. The second derivative test involves finding the critical points and evaluating the concavity of the function at those points to determine the nature of the extremum.
Yes, it is possible for a function to have both a maximum and a minimum at the same point, known as a saddle point. This occurs when the function has a critical point that is neither a maximum nor a minimum, but rather a point of inflection where the concavity changes.
The position and values of maxima and minima can be affected by changing the variables in a physical system. For example, in a simple harmonic oscillator, the maximum displacement and minimum potential energy of the system are affected by the amplitude and frequency of the oscillation. In general, changing the parameters of a physical system can result in shifts or changes in the maxima and minima of its associated quantities.