Mantis shrimp have unusual eyes. Mostly famously, they have 16 color receptors, compared to a human’s three. Oddly, they are not that good at distinguishing between colors, but they can detect another property of light invisible to humans: polarization.
While polarization can be difficult to intuit, you can imagine light waves as a bunch of different strings that each have one end attached to a wall. If you shake them randomly, they will vibrate in every direction; that is how non-polarized light behaves. If you only the shake the strings up and down, restricting vibrations to one direction, then that is like vertically polarized light. Light can be polarized in different directions. Polarized sunglasses take advantage of this phenomenon: They reduce glare by filtering out horizontally polarized light that bounces off a road or water surface.
In the ocean, light can be also be polarized when it bounces off molecules in water. Mantis shrimp can see up to six types of polarization: horizontal, vertical, two diagonals, and two types of circular polarization, in which a light wave spirals clockwise or counterclockwise. (They are the only animals known to see circularly polarized light.) Gruev likens it to wearing “six different miniature polarized sunglasses.” So Gruev and his team essentially miniaturized polarized lenses and put them inside a video camera.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: MicroPython Pico W Bluetooth, CircuitPython 8.0.4 and much more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
