Development of an educational device, based on Arduino, to facilitate the understanding of light diffraction

Abstract

The Arduino board and its communication with several sensors are becoming more and more popular in the physical science community. They offer inspiring possibilities for learning different physical concepts. In this article, we focused on creating a very practical educational system for experimenting with diffraction of laser light and graphically visualizing the distribution of light intensity in space, which is impossible to perform it with the devices available in the educational laboratories of physics. The main elements of this configuration are the Arduino UNO microcontroller board, the BH1750 sensor and the NEMA17 motor and its A4990 driver. The results’ graph is displayed in real time on the computer using the Data Streamer add-in. We see that the abbreviated curve corresponds well to the theory. In addition, feedback from the participants in the test activity of the device showed that they were satisfied with its operation and its contribution to the understanding of diffraction. Therefore, we believe that the device presented can play a very important role in the diffraction phenomenon learning because of its high precision and reliability in the measurements.