ABSTRACT
As mentioned in Section 2.4, natural light consists of waves vibrating in all planes perpendicular to the direction of propagation. Light vibrating in a single plane can be selected from natural light by passing it through a device known as a ‘polar’. This light is then said to be ‘plane-polarized’. If a second polar is placed with its permitted vibration perpendicular to that of the first, none of the plane-polarized light will be transmitted through it. In this position the polars are said to be ‘crossed’. The essential special components of a polarized-light microscope are two such polars, known respectively as the ‘polarizer’ and the ‘analyser’.
