Required information Some glasses used for viewing 3D movies are polarized, one lens having a vertical transmission axis and the other horizontal. While standing in line on a winter afternoon for a 3D movie and looking through his glasses at the road surface, Maurice notices that the left lens cuts down reflected glare significantly, but the right lens does not. The glare is minimized when the angle between the reflected light and the horizontal direction is 36.9°. What is Brewster's angle for this case?

Required information Some glasses used for viewing 3D movies are polarized, one lens having a vertical transmission axis and the other horizontal. While standing in line on a winter afternoon for a 3D movie and looking through his glasses at the road surface, Maurice notices that the left lens cuts down reflected glare significantly, but the right lens does not. The glare is minimized when the angle between the reflected light and the horizontal direction is 36.9°. What is Brewster's angle for this case?

Physics for Scientists and Engineers

10th Edition

ISBN:9781337553278

Author:Raymond A. Serway, John W. Jewett

Publisher:Raymond A. Serway, John W. Jewett

Chapter37: Diffraction Patterns And Polarization

Section: Chapter Questions

Problem 31P

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Integrated Concepts (a) On a day when the intensity of sunlight is 1.00 kW/m2, a circular lens 0.200 m in diameter focuses light onto water in a black beaker. Two polarizing sheets of plastic are placed in front of the lens with their axes at an angle of 20.0°. Assuming the sunlight is un-polarized and the polarizers are 100% efficient, what is the initial rate of heating of the water in °C/s, assuming it is 80.0% absorbed? The aluminum beaker has a mass of 30.0 grams and contains 250 grams of water. (b) Do the polarizing filters get hot? Explain.
What is most likely to happen to a beam of light when it reflects from a shiny metallic surface at an arbitrary angle? Choose the best answer, (a) It is totally absorbed by the surface, (b) It is totally polarized, (c) It is un-polarized. (d) It is partially polarized, (e) More information is required.
Unreasonable Results To save money on making military aircraft invisible to radar, an inventor decides to coat them with a non-reflective material having an index of refraction of 1.20, which is between that of air and the surface of the plane. This, he reasons, should be much cheaper than designing Stealth bombers. (a) What thickness should the coating be to inhibit the reflection of 4.00-cm wavelength radar? (b) What is unreasonable about this result? (c) Which assumptions are unreasonable or inconsistent?
Endoscopes are medical instruments used to examine the gastrointestinal tract and other cavities inside the body. The light required for examination is conducted from an outside source along a long, flexible bundle of optical fibers to the tip, where it exits and illuminates the internal cavity. A lens on the lip collects an image of the lighted cavity and another fiber bundle conducts the image back along the endoscope to an eyepiece for viewing (Fig. P22.52). If each fiber in the bundle has diameter d = 1.00 104 m and refractive index n = 1.40, find the smallest outside radius R permitted for a bend in the fiber if no light is to escape. Figure P22.52
Light with a wavelength in vacuum of 546.1 nm falls perpendicularly on a biological specimen that is 1.000 m thick. The light splits into two beams polarized at right angles, for which the indices of refraction are 1.320 and 1.333, respectively. (a) Calculate the wavelength of each component of the light while it is traversing the specimen. (b) Calculate the phase difference between the two beams when they emerge from the specimen.
(a) On a day when the intensity of sunlight is 1.00kW/m2 , a circular lens 0.200 m in diameter focuses light onto water in a black beaker. Two polarizing sheets of plastic are placed in front of the lens with their axes at an angle of 20.0°. Assuming the sunlight is unpolarized and the polarizers are 100% efficient, what is the initial rate of heating of the water in °C/s, assuming it is 80.0% absorbed? The aluminum beaker has a mass of 30.0 grams and contains 250 grams of water. (b) Do the polarizing filters get hot? Explain.
Unreasonable Results Light traveling from water to a gemstone strikes the surface at an angle of 80.0° and has an angle of refraction of 15.2°. (a) What is the speed at light in the gemstone? (b) What is unreasonable about this result? (c) Which assumptions are unreasonable or inconsistent?
When light is incident normally on the interface between two transparent optical media, the intensity of the reflected light is given by the expression S1=(n2n1n2+n1)2S1 In this equation, S1 represents the average magnitude of the Poynting vector in the incident light (the incident intensity), S1 is the reflected intensity, and n1 and n2 are the refractive indices of the two media. (a) What fraction of the incident intensity is reflected for 589-nm light normally incident on an interface between air and crown glass? (b) Does it matter in part (a) whether the light is in the air or in the glass as it strikes the interface?
(a) Light reflected at 62.5° from a gemstone in a ring is completely polarized. Can the gem be a diamond? (b) At what angle would the light be completely polarized if the gem was in water?
From his measurements, Roemer estimated that it took 22 mm for light to travel a distance equal to the diameter of Earth’s orbit around the Sun. (a) Use this estimate along with the known diameter of Earth’s orbit to obtain a rough value of the speed of light. (b) Light actually takes 16.5 mm to travel this distance. Use this time to calculate the speed of light.
Pierre de Fermat (16011665) showed that whenever light travels from one point to another, its actual path is the path that requires the smallest time interval. This statement is known as Fermats principle. The simplest example is for light propagating in a homogeneous medium. It moves in a straight line because a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. Derive Snells law of refraction from Fermats principle. Proceed as follows. In Figure P34.54, a light ray travels from point P in medium 1 to point Q in medium 2. The two points are, respectively, at perpendicular distances a and b from the interface. The displacement from P to Q has the component d parallel to the interface, and we let x represent the coordinate of the point where the ray enters the second medium. Let t = 0 be the instant the light starts from P. (a) Show that the time at which the light arrives at Q is t=r1v1+r2v2=n1a2+x2c+n2b2+(dx)2c (b) To obtain the value of x for which t has its minimum value, differentiate t with respect to x and set the derivative equal to zero. Show that the result implies n1xa2+x2=n2(dx)b2+(dx)2 (c) Show that this expression in turn gives Snells law. n1sin1=n2sin2 Figure P34.54 Problems 54 and 55.
(a) Is light from the sky polarized? (b) Why is it that clouds seen through Polaroid glasses stand out in bold contrast to the sky?