Build your own portable polariscope

Table of Contents

We built our own polariscope device to look for polarization in materials

Below we explain how to make your own:

portable polariscope
old cell phone LCD
Powering(the screen backlight)

Find the leads that power the screen backlight. Solder an old USB cable to the leads.

Reverse view
Plug other cable into powered USB port

3-5 volts are required

Polarized film or 1/4 wave film

Cut the polarizer off an old cell phone, laptop or LCD display.

Put it all together

Place a polarizing film above the magnifier and the cell phone screen below the lens.

Top view power on

System is powered. Polarizer film is not in place.

Still powered on

The polarized film is now blocking the light.

Something else to test
Slide film under magnifier
Thin film inside polariscope

As pressure changes, colors change.

Find conveniently sized

Similar units are for sale on Amazon.

We use this for optics projects, but it is most often used by gemologists in their studies. More information is here http://www.gemologyproject.com/wiki/index.php?title=Polariscope

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