Objective:

Study of polar scope.

Basic terminology:

Polari scope:
A polar scope is a device used to measure the photoelectric effect when a ray of plane polarized
light is passed through a photo elastic material it gets resolved along the two principal stressed
action and each of these component experience different refractive indexes the difference in the
refractive index lead to a relative phase retardation between the two component wave.

Photo elasticity:

Photo elasticity is the measure of change in refractive index, due to presence of stress and strain
in photo elastic material.

Photo elastic material:

It is the material which is capable of changing its refractive index when light passes through it

Optically isotropic material:

Any material which is said to be isotropic optically is that which has same index of refraction in
all direction

Refractive index:
The ratio of velocity of light in space to velocity in certain medium

Temporary double refraction:

Many transparent non crystalline materials are optically isotropic when free of stress, they become
isotropic when they are stressed. These characteristics persist while the load on the material are
maintained but disappear when the load are removed this behavior is known as double refraction

Polarizer:
A polarizer is a special optical device which only permit light to pass in one axis

Wave plate:
Wave plate is an optical element which has the ability to resolve a light vector into orthogonal
components and then transmit each of these component at a different velocities a wave plate has
two axis along which light component are transmitted the axis having faster light component is
faster axis, and the other along which the slower component is called the slower axis.

Isoclinic and isochromatic:

Isoclinic are the locus of the point in the specimen along which the principal stresses are in the
same direction

Isochromatic are the locus of the point along which the difference in the first and second
principal stress remain the same

Types of Polari scope:

1. Plan Polari scope

2. Circular polar scope

1. Plan Polari scope:

The setup consists of two linear polarizer and a light source. The light source can either emit
monochromatic light or white light depending upon the experiment. First the light is passed
through the first polarizer which converts the light in to plane plane polarized light the apparatus
is set up in such a way that this plane polarized light then passes through the stressed specimen.
This light then follows at each point of the specimen the direction of principal stress at that point.
This light is then made to pass through the analyzer and we finally get the fringe pattern the fringe
pattern in a plane Polari scope setup consists of both the isochromatic and isoclinic. The isoclinic
change with the orientation of the polari scope while there is no change in the isochromatic
 2. Circular Polari scope :
In a circular Polari scope setup two quarter wave plate are added to the experimental setup of the
plane Polari scope. The first quarter wave plate is placed in between the polarizer and the specimen
and the second quarter wave plate is placed between the specimen and the analyzer. The effect of
adding the quarter wave plate is that we get circularly polarized light.