With finals done and summer school not starting till next Monday I have time write. One of the final projects I had for this school year was an optics project. Stuart, Abbey, and I worked on measuring the interference/diffraction patterns of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 slit apertures. For our setup we used a Helium-Neon laser and slits with .04 mm and slit spacing of .125 mm. The goal of the project was demonstrate subsidiary peaks for the 3, 4, and 5 slit interference pattern. The results were not as spectacular as I had hopped but they were also not bad. We measured the light intensity versus displacement in the plane orthogonal to the laser beam. We were able to measure displacement to the nearest .1 mm. The separation between the slit and the plane of the screen is about half a meter. Even with this resolution the subsidiary peaks were barely visible. The resolution of the sensors cannot be increased, but the interference can be clarified. Increasing the spacing between the slit and the screen would spread out the pattern and allow the subsidiary peaks to be more visible. The project was a great learning experience. I was able to see that the theoretical interference pattern we predicted in class were real and easily observable with the right equipment.