Who uses polarized lenses?
Polarized lenses are a great option for anyone who spends time outdoors. If you’re working outdoors, especially when doing high-glare activities around water or snow, polarized lenses help reduce glare and provide additional clarity while keeping your eyes protected.
There are a lot of different options for protecting your eyes and polarized lenses are just one possibility. Just like protecting your skin if you’re spending hours in the sun, your eyes need protection as well.
The main benefits of polarized lenses include:
1. Reduced Glare
2. Improved Visual Clarity
3. Less Eye Fatigue
4. Enhanced Contrast
5. Eye Protection
How polarized lenses work
Polarized lenses function by preventing glare from directly entering your eyes. When you see an object, it's because your eyes detect the light rays reflecting off that object. Typically, this light is scattered before reaching your eyes.
This scattering occurs because most surfaces, like skin or rocks, are uneven, causing light to bounce off at different angles. However, on smooth, flat, and highly reflective surfaces like water, metal, or snow, the light remains much more intense as it reflects straight into your eyes without scattering.
Polarized lenses are coated with a special chemical that helps block some of this light as it passes through, acting like a filter for the light reflecting directly into your eyes.
In polarized lenses, this filter is oriented vertically, which allows only certain light to pass through. Since glare usually consists of horizontally oriented light, the polarized lenses block it and permit only vertical light to pass. By filtering out the horizontal light, polarized lenses effectively reduce glare and prevent it from hitting your eyes directly.
Recognizing polarized lenses
Determining if your sunglasses are polarized is relatively simple. One method is to observe a reflective surface with and without the lenses. Since polarized lenses reduce glare from bright light reflecting off surfaces and slightly enhance contrast, they should make it easier to see clearly in bright conditions. Another way to test for polarization is by looking at an LCD screen. Polarized lenses often make it harder to view screens compared to regular tinted lenses. When viewed through polarized lenses, LCD screens may appear black or very dark.
Resources:https://www.healthline.com/health/polarized-lenses#polarized-vs-uv
