My, we know so much now, don't we? And we've finally hit the long, hard, month of review before the AP exam! Wow. In fact, as I was sitting and reading my online Physics book at my computer before this past test, I discovered some very interesting facts about my computer, and the way I found this out may seem a little strange. If you are wondering about my picture, no I did not just finish watching Blues Brothers or sitting at the beach. In fact, I was trying out my new sunglasses to make sure they were comfortable(I broke my old ones a while ago), with a very inquisitive look on my face. However, this fact combined with a small quirk of mine brought me some valuable Physics insight. Here's the quirk that some of you may have noticed: I sometimes sit with my head inclined to one side or the other, depending on what I'm doing. At this particular time as I sat at the computer and absentmindedly turned my head, I noticed something: the screen changed colors. Or actually it didn't change colors, but it got dimmer. I then remembered that my sunglasses were polarized. As I turned my head to the right, the screen got darker until it nearly disappeared. Then as I turned my head to the left, I found that the position of least change in light intensity occured at just about ninety degrees from the position of darkness. This was consistent with the design of polarized lenses, which have very thin dark bands running either vertically or horizontally depending on their purpose. Because of this, only the vertical or horizontal components of all light waves reaching the lens are allowed to pass through to the eye. Therefore, as I turned my head from the brightest point to the dimmest, more of each light wave was being blocked out until almost all of all light waves were blocked. I've included pictures (yes, I am writing this entry in the background) so you can see what I mean. Cool, isn't it? :-)
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