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P H O T O G R A P H Y C O N T E S T Sponsored by A.J. Hirsch |
Josh
Westmount Collegiate Institute
Honorable Mention
2007 OAPT 4U Photo Contest
Polarization on an Icy Morning
I took these pictures outside of my house on a very sunny and clear day. I took these pictures using a 7.2 MP digital camera on a tripod so that the images would like consistent, with only the one photographic variable changing. These pictures demonstrate the concept of polarization of light. The top picture is taken with a polarizing filter and as such, has the glare off of the stones eliminated, while the bottom picture is taken without a polarizing filter and you can see the glare off the stones and snow. Polarization occurs because light is a transverse wave. When the light is reflected from a surface, it becomes polarized in the horizontal plane because the light waves oscillating in this plane reflect more than light waves oscillating in other planes. When the polarizing filter is used in the first photo, it was aligned in the vertical plane, so therefore it did not allow the polarized light from the reflection to pass through into the camera lens. When no polarizing filter was used, as in the second photo, the reflected light waves were not blocked, and as such you can see the glare in the photograph.