Monday, November 24, 2008

Birthday!

This past week was my mother's birthday. Therefore on the night of her birthday, my father purchased a strawberry cake for her. As we were getting ready to sing "Happy Birthday" to her and light the candles, I remembered the lesson about unpolarized and polarized light. We learned in physics that the light exhibited from the candles was unpolarized light because the electrons in the light vibrate across different and random planes. Polarized light would have the electrons reverberating through a sequential and organized pattern. Even though the human eye cannot distinguish between polarized and unpolarized light, we know this fact to be true. The candles which my mother quickly blew out were emanating unpolarized light.



5 comments:

Ayesha said...

Happy Birthday to your mom! Way to apply physics knowledge to everyday life. It's pretty sweet that you know when something is emitting polarized or unpolarized light even if your eyes can't differentiate between the two.

Brandon said...

That is a very nice cake. It also seems that your cake is reflecting red, green and blue waves.

Allie said...

Matt, I don't think your mom is going to appreciate that second picture...Good blog, though. It's a pretty thorough explanation.

finklestein808 said...

Great point!

Allie said...

Oh and btw..my mom had the exact same kind of cake. Maybe we really are sibs