The goal of this experiment was to answer the question, "How does diffraction occur?" Suppose you formulated
this alternate hypothesis:
If the gap width is increased while keeping wavelength
constant, then the observed diffraction will decrease
because the less the ratio between wavelength and gap
width is, the smaller the observed diffraction angle will
be.
To test this hypothesis, you would change the
and observe the
in the system.
Therefore, the independent variable would be the
and the dependent variable would
be the