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Mechanism of the polarisation of light when incident at the Brewster Angle |
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Robert
:The refraction and reflection are both caused by the interaction of the light with the material, at its surface. Either way, the dipoles are in the material. The explanation, as written, assumes the light is incident on a medium from outside. The principle is the same the other way, though. If light goes from a medium into a vacuum, the refracted light in the vacuum has to be generated by dipoles at the surface of the medium. Since they can't be in the vacuum, they must be in the medium. At Brewster's angle, the reflected light is parallel to the direction of oscillation that would be required for dipole radiators to generate the p-polarized refracted beam, so p-polarized light cannot be reflected by this surface.
:In the end, it's all a crude approximation. Light isn't really produced by "dipoles". The dipole approximation does give a good feel for what is going on, though, and gives the correct results if correctly applied.
:Thanks for pointing this out. This paragraph in the article probably needs to be clarified.--[[User:Srleffler|Srleffler]] 22:56, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
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