why can the sunlight that illuminates the earth be approximated by plane waves, whereas the light from a nearby lamp cannot?



Answer :

The wavefront is parallel to the motion's direction. The spherical wavefront still maintains its shape with a "nearby" lamp, therefore we cannot ignore the wavefront's shape.

In contrast to the shorter waves of blue light, the rings would be more widely separated for the longer wavelength red light. Since the wavefront from the Sun is coming from a point source, it is actually spherical. However, because of how tiny the Earth is in relation to the Sun and how far away the Sun is from the Earth. Since the pattern is made up of parallel straight-line-shaped fringes rather than the fringes of overlapping circles, Young's interference experiment with slits results in a crisper fringe pattern than with pinholes.

Learn more about wavefront here-

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