How windows can go from clear to opaque with the flip off a switch?
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The magic of polarization!
You’re going to need props for this, go grab two pairs of sunglasses.
When you look through one the world is a bit dimmer
Take the second one and hold its lens in front of the first and rotate it. If they’re polarized glasses you’ll discover that the amount of light let through depends on the angle that the second pair is rotated. If you only have 1 then look at an on TV/monitor through them while you rotate them and you should get a similar effect.
Polarized glass means that light can only make it through if its wiggling in the correct direction like up/down or left/right but an up/down polarized sheet will almost completely block light that is wiggling left/right
If instead of sunglasses you have a clear panel of up/down polarized glass then most of the light will make it through just fine and will all be oriented up/down. Apply a layer of liquid crystal which can be made to change its polarization direction with an electric charge. When its off and polarized up/down then you don’t see anything different because the light is already polarized that way. As you apply more voltage it rotates to be polarized left/right blocking an increasing amount of light until it is 90 degrees off from the polarization of the glass and blocks close to all the light coming through
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