Study the Effect of the Sugar Solutions on the Rotation of the Plane of Polarization

Abstract

This paper deals with studying the
effect of the polarization properties of
sucrose solution (sugar which is
dissolved in distilled water) as an active
material and proves the ability of this
solution to rotate the plane of polarized
light that passes through it with an angle
(?) which is called the angle of
rotation.Angle of rotation depends on the
molecular structure, the concentration of
the dissolved substance, the path length
of the light that passes through the
solution,and the light wavelength. The
method of measuring the transmitted
power and angle of rotation is called
“optical activity”. Two types of light
source are used. The first one was the
xenon lamp and chooses three color
from it (red, green, and blue) using the
proper filters, and the second source was
He-Ne laser of wavelength 632nm. In
each case, the rotation angle and
transmitted power were measured and
the specific angle of rotation was
calculated at different concentrations of
the solution.
The benefit of this work, as an optical
laboratory application to measure optical
properties of various materials, including
circular birefringence (optical rotation).
It has been found that the effect of
polarized solution on the rotation angles
was very large for blue light when
comparing with red, because of these
measured angles depends on increasing
polarized solution concentrations and
due to the short wavelength of blue light
with respect to green and red lights.