You are watching the latest Star Wars trailer (full screen, of course), and noti

Question

You are watching the latest Star Wars trailer (full screen, of course), and notice that a few individual pixels scattered across the image seem to spell out a message. "Jar Jar lives." You think perhaps your eyes are deceiving you, so you consider the physics. The monitor measures 14.16-inches (0.360-meter) across the diagonal, and is 1024 pixels wide and 768 pixels tall. Each pixel is a square approximately 281 micrometers on each side. Up close, you can see the individual pixels, but from a distance they appear to blend together and form the image on the screen. If the maximum distance between the screen and your eyes at which you can just barely resolve two adjacent pixels is 1.30 meters, what is the effective diameter d of your pupil? Assume that the resolvability is diffraction-limited. Furthermore, use lambda = 550 nanometers as the light wavelength for the pixels in question. Express your answer in millimeters to two significant figures.

Explanation / Answer

I used Rayleigh's criterion which states (theta_minimum) = (lambda/a), where a is the width of the slit. Then (theta_min) = (1.22(lambda))/D, where D is the aperture diameter.

D = 3.10mm

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