Optical Rotation
Optical rotation (optical activity) is the turning of the plane of linearly polarized light about the direction of motion as the light travels through certain materials. It occurs in solutions of chiral molecules such as sucrose (sugar), solids with rotated crystal planes such as quartz, and spin-polarized gases of atoms or molecules. It is used in the sugar industry to measure syrup concentration, in optics to manipulate polarization, in chemistry to characterize substances in solution, and in optical mineralogy to help identify certain minerals in thin sections. It is being developed as a method to measure blood sugar concentration in diabetic people.
Read more about Optical Rotation: History, Theory, Areas of Use
Famous quotes containing the words optical and/or rotation:
“It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Portland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The lazy manage to keep up with the earth’s rotation just as well as the industrious.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)