Cotton–Mouton effect
Have you ever seen a magnet move a paperclip without even touching it? That's because of something called magnetism. But did you know that light can also have a tiny magnetic effect too? It's true, and we call it the "Cotton-Mouton effect."
Imagine you have a piece of string and you tie a knot in the middle of it. If you wiggle the string, the knot will move back and forth. Now, imagine that the string is like a beam of light and the knot is like a tiny magnetic field. When light passes through a material that has a magnetic field, it can make the light "wiggle" a bit too.
This effect is really small, though. It's like if you were wiggling a pencil back and forth and someone across the room could barely see it move. Scientists can measure the Cotton-Mouton effect by shining a laser through a magnetic field and measuring how much the light wiggles. They use this effect in things like MRI machines and studying the properties of magnetic materials.
Imagine you have a piece of string and you tie a knot in the middle of it. If you wiggle the string, the knot will move back and forth. Now, imagine that the string is like a beam of light and the knot is like a tiny magnetic field. When light passes through a material that has a magnetic field, it can make the light "wiggle" a bit too.
This effect is really small, though. It's like if you were wiggling a pencil back and forth and someone across the room could barely see it move. Scientists can measure the Cotton-Mouton effect by shining a laser through a magnetic field and measuring how much the light wiggles. They use this effect in things like MRI machines and studying the properties of magnetic materials.