What happens to the light intensity when it passes through two crossed polarizers?
Practice Questions
1 question
Q1
What happens to the light intensity when it passes through two crossed polarizers?
It doubles
It is halved
It becomes zero
It remains the same
When light passes through two crossed polarizers (90 degrees apart), no light is transmitted, resulting in zero intensity.
Questions & Step-by-step Solutions
1 item
Q
Q: What happens to the light intensity when it passes through two crossed polarizers?
Solution: When light passes through two crossed polarizers (90 degrees apart), no light is transmitted, resulting in zero intensity.
Steps: 5
Step 1: Understand what a polarizer is. A polarizer is a filter that allows light waves of a certain orientation to pass through while blocking others.
Step 2: Know that when light hits the first polarizer, it becomes polarized. This means the light waves are aligned in one direction.
Step 3: Recognize that the second polarizer is positioned at 90 degrees (crossed) to the first one. This means it is oriented to block the light waves that passed through the first polarizer.
Step 4: When the polarized light from the first polarizer reaches the second polarizer, it cannot pass through because its orientation does not match the second polarizer's orientation.
Step 5: Since no light can pass through the second polarizer, the intensity of the light after the second polarizer is zero.
