Working of Nicol prism explain
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Answer:
Working of Nicol Prism:
When a beam of unpolarized light is incident on the face P′Q, it gets split into two refracted rays, named O-ray and E-ray.
These two rays are plane polarized rays, whose vibrations are at right angles to each other. The refractive index of Canada balsam cement being 1.55 lies between those of ordinary and extraordinary and 1.4864, respectively.
It is clear from the above discussion that Canada Balsam layer acts as an optically rarer medium for the ordinary ray and it acts as an optically denser medium for the extraordinary ray.
When ordinary ray of light travels in the calcite crystal and enters the Canada balsam cement layer, it passes from denser to rarer medium. Moreover, the angle of incidence is greater than the critical angle, the incident ray is totally internally reflected from the crystal and only extraordinary ray is transmitted through the prism.
Therefore, fully plane polarized wave is generated with the help of Nicol prism.