According to the usual explanation, polarized lenses work by only allowing light with a specific kind of polarization. It’s a simple explanation, and makes a lot of sense.
Why is it then, than when I look at a screen with two polarized glasses, one at an angle from the other, the image does not dim in the overlapping region, when it does in the glass closer to my eyes?
In: 3
It depends on the type of polarization. Sunglasses, for instance, would probably have both lenses polarized against the same type of light; once you filter out the light, filtering it the same way won’t have any obvious difference. It’s like picking out all of the red candies, and then picking out all the red candies again; unless more red candy was added in between, the second filter won’t change anything.
Meanwhile, 3D glasses that use polarization will have different types used in each lens (so that the differently polarized frames are only visible to the appropriate eye). Looking through both lenses at once (such as using a mirror if you don’t want to take the lenses out of their frame) will have a dramatic darkening where they overlap.
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