Arduino-based experiment demonstrating Malus’s law

Abstract

Malus's law states that the intensity of light after passing through two polarizers is proportional to the square of the cosine of the angle between the polarizers. We present a simple setup demonstrating this law. The novelty of our work is that we use a multi-turn potentiometer mechanically linked to one of the polarizers to measure the polarizer's rotation angle while keeping the other polarizer fixed. Both the potentiometer and light sensor used to measure the transmitted light intensity are connected to an Arduino board so that the intensity of light is measured as a function of the rotation angle.