{"id":2688,"date":"2009-05-31T08:55:17","date_gmt":"2009-05-31T13:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=2688"},"modified":"2009-05-31T08:55:17","modified_gmt":"2009-05-31T13:55:17","slug":"shedding-some-light-on-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/2688","title":{"rendered":"Shedding Some Light on Light"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/builtonfacts\/2009\/05\/ropes_fences_and_polarization.php\">Ropes, Fences, and Polarization<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Matt tackles some of the big misconceptions about light, which stem from how light and polarization are presented.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What&#8217;s good about the picture is that it conveys the idea of what it means for a polarizer to select a polarization. What&#8217;s bad about it is that the &#8220;picket fence&#8221; metaphor doesn&#8217;t really have anything to do with the actual physics of light polarization. Instead it furthers the exact misconception we talked about in my earlier post &#8211; that the crests and troughs of the wave have a physical up-and-down extent in space. They do not. The ups and downs represent the strength and direction of the electric field at that point, that&#8217;s all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I remember a professor bringing this up in college.  It&#8217;s easy for me to understand why the wrong picture is accepted \u2014 it seems plausible, and there&#8217;s not much reason to question it at the level it&#8217;s presented.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ropes, Fences, and Polarization Matt tackles some of the big misconceptions about light, which stem from how light and polarization are presented. What&#8217;s good about the picture is that it conveys the idea of what it means for a polarizer &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/2688\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}