The Bright Side of the Spectrum

Overview

A polarizing filter is an optical device that transmits only light waves vibrating in one direction while absorbing others. It reduces reflections and glare, enhances color saturation, and increases image contrast by removing horizontally polarized light commonly produced by reflection from surfaces such as water, glass, or pavement, an essential tool for photography. The objective of this experiment was to find the effect of colored filters (red, yellow, green, blue, purple, vs. no filter) and the angle between two polarizing filters (0°, 30°, 60°, 90°, 120°, 150°, 180°) on the voltage (V), current (μA), and power (mW) produced by a 3.15 in.×3.15 in. solar panel. It was hypothesized that the solar panel’s voltage, current, and power would be highest at 0° and 180°, decrease at 30° and 150°, decrease further at 60° and 120°, and reach its minimum at 90°. To conduct this experiment, a solar panel, a multimeter (for measuring voltage and current), an LED light source (desk lamp), colored plastic filters (red, yellow, green, blue, purple), 2 polarizing filters, a protractor, and a logbook were used. The results showed that the solar panel’s voltage, current, and power was highest at 0° and 180°, second highest at 30° and 150°, second lowest at 60° and 120°, and reached its minimum at 90°, supporting my hypothesis. Possible improvements include adding more trials, expanding the range of polarizer angles, and testing under sunlight. Future research could explore different solar-cell materials, light sources, or additional color filters and combinations.

Competition history

• CSEF 2026 Physics & Astronomy (Junior Division) · Entry J-17-09

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Physics and Astronomy projects
• CSEF Physics and Astronomy projects
• Every CSEF 2026 project