Destructive and Constructive Interference

[Lesley Perez 1F]

Hello all,

I'm looking at the graphs that demonstrate the light behaving like a wave and there are arrows indicating that they are destructive and constructive. I don't seem to understand the difference between the two. What's the difference?

[Austin Cortes 1E]

Destructive interference is when waves are out of phase with each other and "collide." When out of phase waves meet, the amplitude of the resulting wave is smaller than the original (larger) amplitude. Constructive diffraction is when waves are in phase with each other, meaning that their amplitudes will add to each other.

[Aminta Chem]

It also helps to think of them like destructive equal "DEcrease" and constructive as "COmbine." lol hope that helps.