This is a simulation of what happens when polarized light with an intensity of 800 W/m2 is incident on a polarizer. The light is traveling from left to right.

Use the sliders to adjust the polarization direction of the light and the angle of the transmission axis of the polarizer. The graph shows the intensity of the light as a function of the angle of the transmission axis of the polarizer. The line between the incident light disk and the polarizer shows the direction the incident light is polarized in. The line to the right of the polarizer shows the direction the light is polarized in after passing through the polarizer.

Simulation written by Andrew Duffy, and first posted on 1-26-2018.

Creative Commons License
This work by Andrew Duffy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This simulation can be found in the collection at http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/classroom.html.

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