How do Polaroid polarized sunglasses work?
Daylight travels in waves oscillating in all directions of three-dimensional space. Polarized light also travels, but mostly moves in two dimensions: horizontally and vertically. Vertical light brings useful information to the human eye, enabling us to see colours and contrasts, while horizontal light simply creates optical noise or glare. Where light strikes a non-metallic surface such as water it often reflects primarily in a horizontal plane. This creates a high concentration of glare which can be selectively blocked only by a good quality polarizing filter. Polarizing lenses selectively filter out the horizontal light, thus eliminating glare.
