Huygens’ principle: Quick Facts

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Also Known As	Huygens-Fresnel principle • Huygens’ construction

$Diagram illustrating Huygens' principle with labeled plane and spherical wave fronts on the left, showing how each point on a wave front acts as a source of expanding spherical waves, and a depiction on the right of diffracted waves emerging from a transmission grating as curved lines formed by the combination of secondary wavelets.$

$Diagram illustrating Huygens' principle with three panels: circular waves with wavelets forming a new front, plane waves with wavelets recombining, and sound waves diffracting around a corner due to Huygens' wavelets.$

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Huygens’ wavelet envelope wave front

Christiaan Huygens

Dutch scientist and mathematician