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Polarization Microscope

This pdf contain Introduction about Polarization Microscope, It's working principle and it's Application.

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LINTA JOSEPH
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200 views

Polarization Microscope

This pdf contain Introduction about Polarization Microscope, It's working principle and it's Application.

Uploaded by

LINTA JOSEPH
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Polarization microscope

Introduction
When light is transmitted through a particular direction or through a
medium, its electric fields moves perpendicular to the direction of transmission. If
the electric field is confined to one plane the light is said to be plane polarized.
Light can be plane polarized by crystals or by special materials such as Polaroid.
When a beam of unpolarised light falls on a sheet of Polaroid, only light polarized
in one particular direction passes through. The rest is absorbed. A device that
polarizes the light is called a polarizer. A device used to analyses the direction of
polarization of the beam is called an analyzer. Both the polarizer and analyzer are
normally the same materials such as a Nicol prism or a sheet of Polaroid. These
materials have the ability to polarize light.ie; they have the power to covert a
single ray in to two rays of light, which are vibrating in a single plane at right
angles to each other, and also have the power of absorbing one set of these rays.
This is known as double refraction or birefringence.

Principle
The optical principle of polarization microscope is similar to that of a
compound microscope but differs in having two polarizing optical devices
(polarizer and analyzer).
In a polarizing microscope, light polarized by the polarizer is allowed to
fall on the object. Light scattered from the object is then viewed through an
analyzer. This is because of the double refraction or birefringence property of
analyzer and polarizer.
Working
Equipment includes:
1) A source of light
2) Polarizer
3) Analyzer
4) A standard microscope
The polarizer is formed by calcite sheet which is placed between the
incident light and the specimen and another one is analyzer which is placed above
the objective lens. Instead of ordinary light, the polarizer transmits only plane
polarized light which vibrates only in one direction. The analyzer is rotatable and
its rotation through 360° will cause alternate bright and dark field of vision for
every 180° turn. When the specimen is rotated at 45° to the polarizer and
analyzer, brightness is achieved.
In a polarizing microscope, light polarized by the polarizer is allowed to
fall on the object. Light scattered from the object is then viewed through an
analyzer.
Through an isotropic object, the polarized light travels with the same
velocity and the refractive index will be the same in all directions. An anisotropic
object is birefringent because the polarized light, when passed through it,
becomes split up in to two rays namely an ordinary ray and an extraordinary ray.
These two rays are perpendicular to one another and have different velocities. If
the velocity of the extraordinary ray is greater than that of the ordinary ray, then
the birefringence is positive. If the velocity of the ordinary ray is greater than the
extraordinary ray, then the birefringence is negative.

Applications
1) Used to study the structure of mitotic spindle and nerve fibres. Mostly, the
biological fibres like proteins exhibit positive birefringence while the nucleic
acids exhibit negative birefringence.
2) To study the behavior of the components of contracting muscle.

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