Polarization by Scattering
Safety Warnings
Warning: Heat Hazard from Fiber Optic Lamp
Purpose
Demonstrates that scattered light is polarized perpendicular to the polarization direction of the incident beam. Students rotate a polarizing filter to control the incident polarization and observe the beam alternately vanish from the side view and top view, building intuition for dipole radiation patterns and sky polarization.
Figure 1:
Left: vertically polarized light scatters sideways and is visible from the side; the mirror shows a dim beam from above. Right: horizontally polarized light scatters upward and vanishes from the side view; the mirror shows a bright beam from above.
Equipment
- 1
- 1