Haidinger's Brush and Circular Polarizers (Blue & Yellow)

Note: I forgot to mention it in the video, but the light that comes from an LCD screen is polarized.

I noticed that the 3D glasses I received from a movie displayed a yellow and blue tint when rotated in front of a polarized light source such as an LCD monitor. This immediately made me think of Haidinger's Brush which then led me to making this quick video to show off the phenomenon.

I am interested in knowing why this blue/yellow tinting is seen both with a polarizer and with the human eye.

Research on Haidinger's Brush was carried out by Albert Le Floch, Guy Ropars, Jay Enoch, Vasudevan Lakshminarayanan in their paper titled "The polarization sense in human vision." They postulated that the chemical structure of the pigment in the blue cone cells of the retina as being responsible for Haidinger's Brush. If this is the case, I wonder why the polarizer would give the same effect?

I thought that maybe the camera would be unable to see this tint shift if it was truly due to the chemical structure of the pigment in the retina of the eye.

Any insights are welcomed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haidinger's_brush

Edit: This effect is not unknown, because it appears that there are circular polarizers used for photography that let the photographer select a blue or yellow tint based on which direction their filter is rotated.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• polarized light
• circular polarizer
• haidinger's brush
• haidinger
• Wilhelm Karl von Haidinger
• light
• polarization
• LCD
• polaroid
• light polarization
• polarizer
• retina
• Xanthophyll

[easy90rider]

turn the glasses around and rotate it in front of the screen :) magic :LOL: