Abstract
A block of birefringent gelatin acts as a variable retarder when driven harmonically by a speaker coil and can be used to vary the polarization of a laser beam sinusoidally. We model this effect with Mueller matrices and show that the gelatin behaves much like a commercial photoelastic modulator and is suitable for a variety of polarimetry experiments in an advanced undergraduate optics course.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 13-19 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | American Journal of Physics |
| Volume | 77 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2009 |