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Blocking Blinding Glare
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When light hits a reflective surface, such as water, snow, even cars and buildings, the light can become polarized, resulting in glare that can interfere with your vision. Only polarized lenses can remove this glare, working much as a venetian blind to block out horizontal polarized light waves.
We’ve all experienced glare in our daily environment… perhaps spending the day at the beach or on a boat with the sun illuminating the surface of the water, or driving in a car with the sun reflecting off the dashboard, roadway or hood.
Usually, this glare is annoying and uncomfortable on the eyes, but when the angle of reflection is just
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right, the glare can become blinding and often downright dangerous, as in the case of driving a vehicle.
Ordinary tinted sunglass lenses only cut down on ambient light that reaches the eye, or, light transmittance. By their very nature, they cannot block glare. Only polarized lenses can block out this dangerous, blinding glare.
To understand how, you will need to understand how glare works and how polarized lenses work.
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What is Glare?
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 Light waves travel in all directions: some light travels in horizontal waves, while others travel in vertical waves. When light hits a surface, typically lightwaves are absorbed and/or reflected in a random manner. However, if light hits a reflective surface (such as water, snow, even cars or buildings) at just the right angle, some of the light becomes "polarized". This means that vertical light waves are absorbed while horizontal light waves bounce off the surface, creating glare.
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What is a Polarized Lens?
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 Polarized lenses contain millions of parallel rows of tiny iodine crystals or dichroic dyes (so small they can’t be seen with the naked eye) that act in a manner similar to venetian blinds. Like venetian blinds, the horizontal rows of iodine crystals contained within the polarized lens block out horizontal polarized light waves, letting only (non-polarized) vertical light waves reach the eye. This results in comfortable vision with no glare, and is the reason why only a polarized lens can block glare. See for yourself.
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