Question:easy

Sir C. V. Raman was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on:

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Recall the effect named after Raman himself, involving a wavelength shift in scattered light.
Updated On: Jul 16, 2026
  • Diffraction
  • Interference
  • Scattering
  • Polarization
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The Correct Option is C

Solution and Explanation

Separate the four listed optical phenomena and match each one to its typical domain.
  • Diffraction: bending of light around edges and obstacles, studied historically by scientists such as Fresnel and Fraunhofer, not the discovery credited to Raman's Nobel Prize.
  • Interference: superposition of light waves producing bright and dark fringes, associated classically with Young's double slit experiment.
  • Polarization: restriction of light vibrations to a single plane, studied by scientists like Malus and Brewster.
  • Scattering: change in the direction, and in Raman's special case, also the wavelength, of light after it interacts with molecules of a medium.
Raman's Nobel Prize winning discovery was that a small fraction of scattered light shifts to a new wavelength because of energy exchange with molecular vibrations, an effect now called Raman scattering. This is why the Nobel award citation is tied to scattering, option C, and not to diffraction, interference or polarization.
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