Talk:Brewster's angle

message: The last sentence:
"The refractive index for a given medium changes depending on the wavelength of light, but typically does not vary much. The difference in the refractive index between ultra violet (≈100nm) and infra red (≈1000nm) in glass, for example, is ≈0.01."
is only true for dielectric materials, glas, diamond ect.
In semiconductors, which have bandgaps (critical points) in the visible or infrared region,
the refractive indices can vary quite dramatically and hence the brewster angle.
*I've removed most of that statement for a more general one. In fact, it was wrong anyway - most glasses have a bigger variation than 0.01 between the UV and NIR. --Bob Mellish 18:34, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Last sentence

message: Can someone check this edit:  and see if it's vandalism.  The user is a persistent vandal but I don't know enough about Brewster's angle to know if the change was legit or not.  Powers 14:15, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I looked at the edit and can confirm that it´s clearly vandalism. The former formulae are correct! waifar 84.178.106.15 11:44, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism? 

message: There's a missspelling in the first paragraph: "The polarization that cannot be reflected at this angle is the one for which the electric field of the light waves lies in the same plane as the incident ray and the surface normal." Should be "AS this angle", not "AT this angle, right?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 134.2.74.148 (talk • contribs) 07:58, October 5, 2006.
:No, it is correct as written. I'm not sure how you are interpreting it, but you are clearly not interpreting what is written there correctly. If you explain what you think it says, perhaps we can make the wording clearer. --Srleffler 19:38, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Typo??

message: I would like to suggest to add an external link to BrewstersAngle.INFO. This is an easy-to-use Brewster's angle calculator which uses refractive index values of real materials. Wikipedia's policy does not allow me to add the link myself as I am the author of this site. Please, add a link if you find this site appropriate. Thanks! Mpolyanskiy (talk) 00:29, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  External link suggestion 

message: The use of p and s does not seem very clear. Contrast "Light with this polarization is said to be p-polarized, because it is parallel to the plane" with "by definition, the s-polarization is parallel to the interface". After reading three or four times (and having prior knowledge of the physics) it made sense, but it really should be clearer. Saying that s is parallel to the interface when defining it would be better.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.169.208.99 (talk) 06:47, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  p vs. s 

message: The derivation is extremely confusing. The \theta_in + \theta_out=90 is not clear, because brewster's angle only exists for one polarization and not the other. I might get angry and do a rewrite. One really angry guy (talk) 01:30, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: As the text tries to explain, reflection goes to zero when the electric field direction of light inside the material is parallel to the propagation direction of reflected light outside the material. That occurs when \theta_{in} + \theta_{out}=90^\circ, and only happens for p-polarization. For s-polarization, the electric field inside the material is never parallel to the propagation direction of the light outside the material. If you think you can describe it better, go ahead and rewrite the derivation. No need to get angry.--Srleffler (talk) 05:26, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

text: Explaining Brewster's angle in terms of the Fresnel equations would be better, but this should not include a full derivation. By policy, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a textbook. Long derivations are generally out of our scope. In physics articles, even short derivations are really only appropriate when they serve to explain the physics. Where possible, we write for a lay audience, not for physicists. The derivation that is in the article now is not very good, but it does show how the condition described above leads to Brewster's angle.--Srleffler (talk) 21:36, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

text: "That is, if the oscillating dipoles are aligned along the supposed direction of the reflection, no light is reflected at all." I could not follow this sentence. Are we assuming that the dipoles know the angle of incidence and line up with it, or are we assuming that they occur in every direction but deducing that these particular ones are the only ones that can be involved in absorbing and retransmitting light? If so, perhaps the reasoning could be spelled out more completely.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.227.237.33 (talk) 16:17, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The derivation is poorly written and needs a rewrite, but I can't attempt that tonight. The dipoles are excited by the incident light, and  have their moments parallel to the electric field of the light in the medium (i.e. the refracted light). It happens that the dipoles can't emit light along their moment axis, so if the dipoles happen to be lined up with the direction in which the reflected light has to go, that light can't be produced.--Srleffler (talk) 06:38, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

text: I see that I wrote a clearer explanation in 2010 but somebody overwrote it.--Srleffler (talk) 07:01, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

text: I replaced the bad explanation with the old one. As it was, the explanation was flat out wrong on several points.--Srleffler (talk) 07:12, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Derivation needs a rewrite

message: n1 and n2 are not defined, and since the argument of arctan can be either greater or less than 1 we cannot deduce which medium has refractive inded n1 and which n2.  This renders the definition meaningless.
Andrew Smith  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.32.48.177 (talk) 17:20, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. The answer was common sense, though: n1 is the index of the first medium through which the light propagates.--Srleffler (talk) 22:59, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: The definition is ambiguous as well

message: This page is appropriate for optics, but brewsters angle applies to all EM waves, including radio, microwave, etc. It needs its EM formulation, and a description of what happens to parallel and perpendicular e-field vectors.
166.19.102.20 (talk) 21:08, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds like a good idea. Feel free to write something about it and add it to the article.--Srleffler (talk) 04:56, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs general EM formulation for parallel and perpendicular polarization 

message: Is there any publication before 1813? The one I found predates the one used in the article by two years .
--Stone (talk) 09:42, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  year of discovery 

message: I meant to write in the edit summary (but must have hit the wrong key and it got published before I could finish!) that the section on polarizing sunglasses and camera filters doesn't really have to do with the Brewster angle, but is about reflections at large incidence angles, period. So I didn't think it belongs in this page, but didn't want to argue about it and just improved what was there. If someone wants to remove it for that reason (and perhaps incorporate any of it in a more relevant page), please go ahead.Interferometrist (talk) 22:33, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not on subject 

message: https://sites.esm.psu.edu/~axl4/lakhtakia/Documents/No170(Optik).pdf 2607:FEA8:5420:680:F3C0:9271:A531:9CA2 (talk) 03:37, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. Thanks,--Srleffler (talk) 19:14, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dead link in page; found one site with respective document