The Scintillating Spectacle of StressGabe ShapiroAward: Top 100
School: glenbard west high school Under regular lighting, this is just a plain glass sphere– with some air pockets inside--but something magical happens when you polarize the light. Suddenly, all these colors appeared in my viewfinder, and I knew I was doing something right. As we manufacture transparent materials such as glass or plastic, it is impossible to cool the material perfectly evenly. This results in substantial internal strain, and tiny imperfections that are invisible under normal conditions. But when we send polarized light through the glass it beautifully demonstrates the birefringent effect, nudging the wavelength just enough to bring out beautiful colors. Notice how you can see rings around the air torus in the middle of the orb, you can clearly see how it cooled much differently than the bulk of the material, having a blue purple aura around it. Taking this photo required a completely polarized light source, so I used an LCD screen for the backlight. Initially I was noticing that the colors were really washed out by the backlight when it suddenly hit me to use a second polarized filter to completely remove the light that was not refracted. When you put two polarizers 90 degrees apart it completely filters out the light, so I was able to filter out all the light that was not affected by the glass' natural birefringence. This transparent glass ball beautifully demonstrates both birefringence, and the natural stresses that exist in everyday objects–and people–that are hidden beneath the surface. 
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