This is a simulation of what happens when unpolarized light, with an intensity of 800 W/m2 is incident on a sequence of three polarizers. The light is traveling in the +x direction and the polarizers are located at x = 10 cm, x = 20 cm, and x = 30 cm.

Use the sliders to adjust the angle of the transmission axis of each polarizer. The graph shows the intensity of the light at different locations along the x axis. The lines after each polarizer show the direction the light is polarized in. The incident light has multiple lines to show that it is unpolarized.

Simulation written by Andrew Duffy, and first posted on 1-25-2018.

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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