Abstract

Investigations were conducted for the purposes of understanding coloring phenomena to be caused by optical rotation of polarized light beams in sugared water and realizing their applications as educational tools. By allowing polarized laser beams in red, blue or green to travel in sugared water of certain concentrations, changes in their intensities were measured while changing a distance between a pair of polarizing plates in the sugared water. An equation was established for a theoretical value for the angle of rotation for light of any colors (wavelengths) travelling in sugared water of any concentrations. The predicted results exhibited satisfactory matching with the measured values. In addition, the intensities of transmitted laser beams, as well as colors to be observable when a white-color LED torch was employed as a light source, were also become predictable, and the predicted results were well-matched with the observation results.

© 2017 OSA, SPIE, ICO, IEEE