Polarization
1. A person sitting on the beach is wearing a pair of Polaroid sunglasses and notices little discomfort due to
the glare from the water on a bright sunny day. When she lies on her side, however, she notices that the
glare increases. Why?
2. You are sitting by the shore of a lake on a sunny and windless day. Your Polaroid sunglasses are not
equally effective at all times of the day in reducing the glare of the sunlight reflected from the lake.
Account for this observation.
3. Sketch the graph of the Brewster angle verses the index of refraction.
4. Light is reflected from a glass coffee table. When the angle of incidence is 56.70, the reflected light is
completely polarized parallel to the surface of the glass. What is the index of refraction of the glass?
5. For light that originates within a liquid and strikes the liquid-air interface, the critical angle is 390. What
is the Brewster’s angle for this light?
6. Sunlight strikes a diamond surface. At what angle of incidence is the reflected light completely
polarized?
7. Light is incident from air onto the surface of a liquid. The angle of incidence is 53.0 0, the angle of
refraction is 34.00. At what angle of incidence would the reflected light be 100% polarized?
8. When light strikes the surface between two materials from above, the Brewster angle is 65 0. What is the
Brewster angle when the light encounters the same surface from below?
9. A bright source of light is viewed through two polarizers whose preferred directions are initially
parallel. Calculate the angle through which one sheet should be turned to reduce the transmitted
intensity to half its original value.
10. Unpolarized light passes through two Polaroids, the axis of one is vertical and that
of the other is at 60o to the vertical. Describe the orientation and intensity of the
transmitted light.