Super Shrimp Eyes

My first experience with polarized light was when I borrowed my husband's sunglasses. The light bouncing off of the lake was suddenly gone and I could see the fish swimming up to his fishing bobber. It was all very exciting and turned what was a moderately fun passtime, watching my husband fish, into the more action packed experience of seeing when the fish were interested in the lure.

Polarized sunglasses work by eliminating all of the light coming through the lenses that is oriented in a particular way. If you look at your digital watch through them you sometimes can't see the display because the light coming from the watch is oriented the same way that light bouncing off of the surface of the lake is. There are lots of ways that light can be oriented. It can be oriented in a linear way, an eliptical way, or even circular. Or, it can be totally unpolarized, meaning that it is oriented in lots of different ways because it is coming from more than one place at a time.

DVD players have a mechanism in them that changes the polarization of light but it only works for a limited spectrum of colors. In studying this shrimp, scientists have found a better, simpler, more versatile way to do the same thing. It could change the way lots of devices are made in the future.

Links:

The abstract

An easy to understand article about it

How polarized sunglasses work

Word of the Day

Wave Plate: The doohickey in your DVD player that changes the polarization of the light going through it.