polarizing filter

Question

Intensity after ideal polarizer on unpolarized light becomes:

RankGuru · Accepted Answer

Unpolarized light consists of waves oscillating in all possible transverse directions.
- An ideal linear polarizer allows only the component of the electric field along its transmission axis.
- Mathematically, we average $\cos^2 	heta$ over all angles from $0$ to $2\pi$, which is **$1/2$**.
- Thus, the transmitted intensity is exactly half the incident intensity, regardless of the orientation of the polarizer.

Rank Guru

polarizing filter

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