3: The Cornu Spiral

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Contributed by Jeremy Tatum
Emeritus Professor (Physics & Astronomy) at University of Victoria

3.1: Cornu's Spiral
Cornu’s spiral is a graphical device that enables us to compute and predict the Fresnel diffraction pattern from various simple obstacles.

Thumbnail: A double-end Euler spiral. The curve continues to converge to the points marked, as t tends to positive or negative infinity. (CC BY-SA 3.0; AdiJapan).