Amanda

POLARIZED LIGHT

How can you block light? Can you use regular sunglasses? I choosed this topic, because I thought it was interesting how Polarized sunglasses can block light?

I wanted to know if sunglasses really could block light. We weren't really sure how to go about doing this. We thought one lense won't work. We tried two regular sunglass lenses and that didn't block the light. My partner and I tried two polarized lenses. How could we make the polarized lenses block light?

I decided to go on line and learn about how polarized sunglasses work. According to The Book of Knowledge Online, scientist know the direction of polarized sunlight. Sunglasses are made to block that direction of polarization. On a bright sunny day polarized sunglasses can protect the eyes from glare. If you take a pair of polarized sunglasses hold them in front of one another and slowly rotated the glasses you would notice the sky getting light to darker. I also learned that a normal beam of light has many waves. When you look across a wet road and a cars headlights shine across it, you see the glare, its bumpy, thats polarized light. If you wear polarized glasses it takes the glare away, according to The Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia.

Then we were ready to try our experiment. First, we got a pair of polarized sunglasses and removed the lenses. Next we got a flashlight. Then we put the two lenses on top of each other against the flashlight beam to block the light. It didn't work. The light still showed through the two lenses. It didn't totally block the light. We finally took the two lenses and rotated them at different angles and it blocked the light. Then we tried regular tinted sunglass lenses and tried doing the same thing and it didn't block the light.

What I discovered from my research was polarized sunglass lenses do block light, if they are turned at different right angles. You cannot just put them on top of each other on the flashlight beam, this will not totally block the light.

If I had more time to research this topic I would have tried using different types of light. You could try using candle light and ultra violet light, to see how much light shines through. I would also like to try using three polarized lenses and see what would have happened. What do you think would happen if you used a tinted lense and a polarized lense. Would it block the light?

Bibliography

-The New Book of Knowledge Online. How do polarized sunglasses work? http: //nbk. grolier. com

-Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. Polarized light, http: //gme. grolier. com

-Encarta Encyclopedia Online Deluxe. Light, http: //encarta. msn. com.