Material for this Lab Experiment 12 Manual General Lab Docum

Material for this Lab Experiment 12 Manual General Lab Documents TOC and Introduction Appendix A: Error Analysis for the Physics Labs Appendix B: Introduction to Spreadsheets and EXCEL 2010 Problem Statement: Consider the following: Part (a) What direction can the electric field point in an unpolarized light beam travelling in the z-direction? MultipleChoice : 1) Any direction except z. 2) Any direction perpendicular to z. 3) The negative z-direction. 4) The z-direction.

Solution

The answer is any direction perpendicular to z.

Because for an unpolarized light wave travelling in z-direction, the electric field components are E_x and E_Y