Polarised waves
Polarised waves
- If you shake a rope in any direction, it still makes a transverse wave.
- However, if you try and shake a rope through a gate, then the wave can only be vertical.
- This means that the fence is filtering out waves that are not vertical and makes the fence act as a polariser.
- Ordinary light waves are a mixture of different directions of vibration, therefore you can polarise light.
- A good way to do this is with a polarising filter. This filter only allows waves that are vibrating in a particular direction through.
- If you have two polarising filters at right angles to one another, then no light can get through and all you will see is darkness.