Originally an empirical law, nowadays Malus’ law is seen as a key experiment to demonstrate the transverse nature of electromagnetic waves, as well as the intrinsic connection between optics and electromagnetism. In this work, a simple and inexpensive setup is proposed to quantitatively verify the nature of polarized light. A flat computer screen serves as a source of linear polarized light and a smartphone (possessing ambient light and orientation sensors) is used, thanks to its built-in sensors, to experiment with polarized light and verify Malus’ law.
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It is called a pseudo-sensor because it does not measure directly the inclination but obtains it based on algorithms using the information from the built-in accelerometer, magnetometer, and, eventually, the gyroscope.
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2017
American Association of Physics Teachers
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