University of Cambridge > Talks.cam > Craik Club > The sensitivity of the human eye to the polarisation of light

  Browse A-Z

Log in

University Account External (via Google)

🔐 Log In

Information on

Subscribing to talksdetails Finding a talkdetails Adding a talkdetails Disseminating talksdetails Help and Documentationdetails

ℹ️ Information

The sensitivity of the human eye to the polarisation of light

Download to your calendar using vCal

If you have a question about this talk, please contact John Mollon .

From the zenith of the clear blue sky at sunset, to the ubiquitous liquid crystal display (LCD), sources of polarised light are everywhere. Yet our ability to observe the polarisation state of light with the naked eye alone is not widely known. When exposed to a source of linearly polarised light the observer sees a faint visual phenomenon consisting of a yellow hourglass flanked by blue-purple regions. This image extends for a few degrees around the fixation point and fades in a couple of seconds if the angle of polarisation is not altered. The phenomenon is referred to as ‘Haidinger’s brush’ after the mineralogist who first reported it.

Whilst considerable effort has been directed toward testing polarization vision in other animals, the limits of human polarisation sensitivity remain largely uncharacterized and the origin of the effect is subject to dispute. In this talk I will describe the physical mechanisms that have been proposed to explain Haidinger’s brush, consider their plausibility and present our initial attempts at characterising the human polarisation sensitivity threshold.

This talk is part of the Craik Club series.

This talk is included in these lists:

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.

Other lists

Lewin Stroke & Rehabilitation Unit, Seminar Room, R2, Addenbrooke's Hospital LR3, CUED In person in the Max Perutz Lecture Theatre (CB2 0QH) and via Zoom, link: https://mrc-lmb-cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/94108711681?pwd=cXN4VGlQVHBZYkpMUVJ0SXV3emtaUT09

Other talks

Transparency, Diversity, and Equality in Music Psychology: A Meta-Science Perspective Cultural evolution creates language-like structure: from humans to humpback whales and beyond Using A Function-Centric Lens to Re-consider Regularisation, Representation Transfer and Geometric Properties of Neural Networks Online Causal Inference Seminar How Far Can Good Go Without God? The Limits of a Naturalistic Ethic Shining a light on the origin of supermassive black holes with cosmological simulations
 

© 2006-2025 Talks.cam, University of Cambridge. Contact Us | Help and Documentation | Privacy and Publicity