Question

You stand on a straight desert road at night and observe a vehicle approaching. This vehicle is equipped with two small headlights that are 0.659 m apart. At what distance, in kilometers, are you marginally able to discern that there are two headlights rather than a single light source? Take the wavelength of the light to be 545 nm and your pupil diameter to be 4.69 mm.

Answer 1

For a circular aperture, the first minima (n=1) as an angular separation from the peak of the central maxima given by

Sinθ = 1.22λ / d

Where,

d is the aperture or pupil diameter

d = 4.69 mm = 4.69 × 10^-3m

λ is the wavelength

λ = 545 nm = 545 × 10^-9 m

Then,

Sinθ = 1.22λ / d

Sinθ = 1.22 × 545 × 10^-9 / 4.69 × 10^-3

Sinθ = 1.418 × 10^-4 rad

Then, the head light sources have the same angular separation θ from the eye as the image have inside the eye.

For the headlight

Sinθ ≈ light separation / distantce for the eye

Light separation is give as x = 0.659 m

And let the distance of the eye be D

Then,

Sinθ = x / D

Make D subject of formula

D = x / Sinθ

D = 0.695 / 1.418 × 10^-4

D = 4902.316m

To km, 1km = 1000m

D ≈ 4.9 km