In: Physics
How can we measure the thickness of the colored layer for colored hair ? You can take pieces.
Professor is looking for an in depth analysis of which instrumentation/characterization is best for the question.
Use diffraction for this analysis.
The thickness of a human hair is comparable to the wavelength of EM radiation in the visible region. If a monochromatic beam of light is incident on the hair, a diffraction pattern will thus emerge at the screen. The separation between the bright fringes will be dependent on thickness of the hair, distance from the hair to screen and wavelength chosen. Keeping the wavelength and hair to screen distance constant, conduct two trials where one hair strand is the colored one while the other is uncolored. Measure the distance from central maxima to first order maxima for each case [call it x]. Using the relation,
determine the thickness for each case. The thickness of the colored layer will simply be the difference of the two measured thickness.