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Light polarized in the plane is said to be p-polarized, while that polarized perpendicular to it is s-polarized. At a special angle known as Brewster's angle, no p-polarized light is reflected from the surface, thus all reflected light must be s-polarized, with an electric field perpendicular to the plane of incidence.
Light reflected from a non-metallic surface becomes polarized; this effect is maximum at Brewster's angle, about 56° from the vertical for common glass. A polarizer rotated to pass only light polarized in the direction perpendicular to the reflected light will absorb much of it. This absorption allows glare reflected from, for example, a body ...
Fresnel promptly confirmed by experiment that the equations correctly predicted the direction of polarization of the reflected beam when the incident beam was polarized at 45° to the plane of incidence, for light incident from air onto glass or water; in particular, the equations gave the correct polarization at Brewster's angle. [22]
Thus reflected light from horizontal surfaces (such as the surface of a road) at a distance much greater than one's height (so that the incidence angle of specularly reflected light is near, or usually well beyond the Brewster angle) is strongly s-polarized.
Therefore, the polarization state of reflected light (even if initially unpolarized) is generally changed. A stack of plates at Brewster's angle to a beam reflects off a fraction of the s-polarized light at each surface, leaving (after many such plates) a mainly p-polarized beam.
Light reflected by shiny transparent materials is partly or fully polarised, except when the light is normal (perpendicular) to the surface. It was this effect that allowed the mathematician Étienne-Louis Malus to make the measurements that allowed for his development of the first mathematical models for polarised light.
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Light reflected by the surface (6) (or coming from a backlight) is horizontally polarized (5) and passes through the liquid-crystal modulator (3) sandwiched in between transparent layers (2, 4) containing electrodes. Horizontally polarized light is blocked by the vertically oriented polarizer (1), except where its polarization has been rotated ...