Monday, April 18, 2011

Are rainbows reflecting polarized light?

This question came to me (6/13/2009) while looking at a rainbow out my back porch. Rainbows frequently appear behind my house (east) when it is raining in the evening. I was thinking about how the light is reflected inside the raindrops when I remembered that reflected light tends to be polarized. This is why polarized sunglasses work so well. For a fishing example, see: http://bit.ly/gS1x9E. I held my polarized sunglasses in front of my camera and rotated the glasses back and forth. I apologize for the low quality, I was more worried about recording the phenomenon at the time, and didn't check the settings. his was a fun discovery!


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