Aman Bansal
Last Activity: 12 Years ago
Dear Keshav,
A light wave is an electromagnetic wave that travels through the vacuum of outer space. Light waves are produced by vibrating electric charges. The nature of such electromagnetic waves is beyond the scope of The Physics Classroom Tutorial. For our purposes, it is sufficient to merely say that an electromagnetic wave is a transverse wave that has both an electric and a magnetic component.
The transverse nature of an electromagnetic wave is quite different from any other type of wave Lets suppose that we use the customary slinky to model the behavior of an electromagnetic wave. As an electromagnetic wave traveled towards you, then you would observe the vibrations of the slinky occurring in more than one plane of vibration. This is quite different than what you might notice if you were to look along a slinky and observe a slinky wave traveling towards you. Indeed, the coils of the slinky would be vibrating back and forth as the slinky approached; yet these vibrations would occur in a single plane of space. That is, the coils of the slinky might vibrate up and down or left and right. Yet regardless of their direction of vibration, they would be moving along the same linear direction as you sighted along the slinky. If a slinky wave were an electromagnetic wave, then the vibrations of the slinky would occur in multiple planes. Unlike a usual slinky wave, the electric and magnetic vibrations of an electromagnetic wave occur in numerous planes. A light wave that is vibrating in more than one plane is referred to as unpolarized light. Light emitted by the sun, by a lamp in the classroom, or by a candle flame is unpolarized light. Such light waves are created by electric charges that vibrate in a variety of directions, thus creating an electromagnetic wave that vibrates in a variety of directions. This concept of unpolarized light is rather difficult to visualize. In general, it is helpful to picture unpolarized light as a wave that has an average of half its vibrations in a horizontal plane and half of its vibrations in a vertical plane.
It is possible to transform unpolarized light into polarized light. Polarized light waves are light waves in which the vibrations occur in a single plane. The process of transforming unpolarized light into polarized light is known aspolarization. There are a variety of methods of polarizing light
Best Of luck
Cracking IIT just got more exciting,It s not just all about getting assistance from IITians, alongside Target Achievement and Rewards play an important role. ASKIITIANS has it all for you, wherein you get assistance only from IITians for your preparation and win by answering queries in the discussion forums. Reward points 5 + 15 for all those who upload their pic and download the ASKIITIANS Toolbar, just a simple to download the toolbar….
So start the brain storming…. become a leader with Elite Expert League ASKIITIANS
Thanks
Aman Bansal
Askiitian Expert
