a detector to scan for polarized light.

[William Gaatjes]

I wish in the near future to build or buy(when reasonable) a detector for polarized light.
I was reading about insect vision and polarized light. When constructed properly, it is possible to sense where the sun is located. I was thinking that this way light reflections would possibly not have any effect because of the polarizing change. I do not fully understand how this operates yet, but i will get there . But as it seems, the insects who have this vision are able to determine their position from the location of the sun. A build in biological timer compensates for the movement of the earth around the sun and also controls the 24 hour rhythm. At least that is what i think.

Besides from the typical 3d movie polarizing filters, are there any more (common to those people in the field of E&M) that are easy to construct, control, handle ?

 

[William Gaatjes]

Nevermind, i found something simple to start from and improve :

http://www.robotroom.com/Polarizers.html

http://www.robotroom.com/Polarizers7.html

 

[William Gaatjes]

After reading about the vision of bee's, i have learned that the best way to build an polarization detector is to use sensors sensitive to the uv range of the light spectrum. It seems that this way is the best way to follow. Polarization filters (which must be able to pass and polarize uv light ) together with uv sensitive photo sensors.

 

[Ben90]

While I hate to thread crap on highly technical, I'm seriously wondering what the point of this is? I'm sure someone who is smarter than me has a great reason for one of these detectors, but I can tell where the sun is at pretty well by looking for a giant bright thing in the sky

 

[William Gaatjes]

Well, afcourse it is not for me. But my idea is to combine this detector(if i ever get it functional) with a gps receiver and a digital compass. I have the idea that when the gps receiver for some reason no longer works, i can still detect where the sun is and i have an internal timer and i have a digital compass. I have now 3 forms of location input that i can combine. When either gps or compass or sun detector fails to work properly, i can use what still is functioning together with an RTC(real time clock)timer. Besides that, it is just fun to see the basic science behind it working.