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[Phys-l] Interesting Shadows




Howdy-

My school (The Jewish Community High School) has vinyl letters of it's name on a
window, and on sunny mornings they cast a shadow on the wall across the
hallway.

If you imagine the shadow made by the letters, you might picture a shadow of
each of the letters with blurry edges. You might imagine the centers of the
letters to be bright, but they aren't.

The weird bit is that the darkest parts on the wall are where the holes in the
letters would be. They are even darker than the shadows of the letters.

You can see pictures at my infrequently updated blog.

<http://kossover.squarespace.com/journal/2011/2/11/weird-shadows.html>

I presume that it's diffraction related. What say you?

Marc "Zeke" Kossover