How does polarised sunglasses work
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Imagine light as a wave. It wiggles up and down like a wave on a string does. However, the direction it is wiggling can vary between different light waves. One wave might wiggle up and down while another might wiggle left to right, and a different light wave might wiggle anywhere in between.
Polarizers have material in them that is really good at absorbing light waves ONLY if they are wiggling in a specific direction. For example, a polarizer might only be good at absorbing waves that are wiggling up and down, but it wouldn’t absorb light that is wiggling left to right.
Most light that we interact with is unpolarized, that means that the direction that all billions of individual waves of light are wiggling in random directions. If you pick 1 at random you might get one wiggling up and down, you might get one wiggling left to right, or you might get one wiggling somewhere in between up and down and left to right. This means polarized sunglasses will block all the light that is wiggling up and down but leave all the light that is wiggling left to right, which will reduce the amount of light that gets to your eyes making things seem darker.
What is really cool about polarized sunglasses though is that when light reflects off of a surface, like the surface of water, it actually forces the reflected light to wiggle in a very specific direction, this means the light becomes polarized. If you are wearing polarized sunglasses that are specially designed to block this reflected light then it becomes much easier to see into the surface of the water, because all of the reflected light that would normally block your vision into the water because it’s too bright would get blocked, while all the light that originated from underneath the water would get through and be unpolarized so you can see it.
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