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I have a problem here:
A way to make an airplane invisible to radar would be to coat it with an antireflective polymer. Radar waves have a wavelength of 3 cm and the index of refraction for the polymer is n=1.5. How thick should the coating be?
The answer is 0.5 cm. I understand the equation here but I'm not sure why we chose the order number 0. Why don't we use higher order numbers to calculate the destructive wavelength thickness.
i.e.
2nt= (m+ 0.5) lambda. why is m zero in this case? why can't we also use m=1? At m=1 it is still destructive interference. Is it because we want the thinnest possible layer?
A way to make an airplane invisible to radar would be to coat it with an antireflective polymer. Radar waves have a wavelength of 3 cm and the index of refraction for the polymer is n=1.5. How thick should the coating be?
The answer is 0.5 cm. I understand the equation here but I'm not sure why we chose the order number 0. Why don't we use higher order numbers to calculate the destructive wavelength thickness.
i.e.
2nt= (m+ 0.5) lambda. why is m zero in this case? why can't we also use m=1? At m=1 it is still destructive interference. Is it because we want the thinnest possible layer?