Project Proposal

When light travels through a medium that is not a vacuum the electric field of the electromagnetic wave induces oscillating electric dipoles in the atoms and molecules that compose the medium.  These induced dipoles affect the propagation of the waves and can also scatter the light in various directions.  For particles that are smaller than one-tenth the wavelength of the incident light Rayleigh scattering is observed.  For these small particles the scattering can be predicted by the Rayleigh theory.  By manipulating variables in the Rayleigh theory such as particle size and density, scattering angle, and wavelength, I want to numerically predict and model different scattering intensities using Mathematica.  In addition I want to approach the particle size limit for Rayleigh theory to observe what happens to the modeled scattering and compare that to Rayleigh-Debye modeled scattering, which can be used to predict the scattering of particles larger than the Rayleigh limit.