Summer of Math Exposition

The premise asking why the sky is polarized doesn’t really start to get answered until about 8 minutes in in what is a relatively straight-forward concept. I think there is a lot of setup that could be condensed because as I was watching, I had to keep wondering “why is this going?” and I don’t think we needed so much setup. Mabye a rework of this could have started with, “ever wonder why the sky is polarized, or your smartphone, or water but only from the side?” and gone from there. Maybe also some practical uses for polarization as well along the lines of “ok so I understand this now but why should I really care about this or what can I do with this info?”

Quite hard subject for visualization (3D vector fields), which you managed to pull off. I liked the practical effects, although I thought the bit at the end (about Rayleigh scattering with the kettle) was harder to wrap my head arround. Sorry to say that (I’m not a native English speaker myself either) but I found your accent to sometimes hinder good understanding.

Good illustration and live footage. Animations would be a plus.

The hairy ball theorem and dipole explanation is a little confusing

Amazing video and super fun!

It was clearly explained and the visuals were pretty unique. I also liked the that you presented the topic in an energetic way.

I really liked how you knew who your target audience was and helped them understand it by not including too much heavy maths or prerequisite knowledge, instead opting for a more visual approach.

The cats were great :)

You motivated the video saying that there are many explanations of why the sky is blue, but not many about its polarisation. I was thus rather surprised when the video, after finishing its topic, also included an explanation of the colour. I think it would have been beneficial to just stick to the more novel part. The presentation was a bit bumpy — the parts that were novel would have deserved more time and polish, in my opinion. For example, you explained yourself that the 3D plane wave at the very start isn’t very useful, so I think it would have been better to cut it out or improve upon it. This general feeling extends to a lot of the visualisations, as well as the overall structure. Though rough, the video gets its point across. I’d encourage you to take a critical look and not be shy to cut away and redo the parts that need it in your future work.

I don’t think there was much math in this video. Some math concepts (hairy ball theorem, waves, etc.) are stated, but there was no theorem that was proved. There was some motivation at the start, but it wasn’t a mathematical statement but a physical one.

This video helped me to understand polarization a little bit better. I enjoyed the animations, and explanations. I also liked the questions posted at the end, and the experiment with water and light.

This is an interesting effect, and it’s explained very clearly.

This is a phenomenon I had never heard of before and so it’s interesting I think there should be a video explaining it. Thank you for making it! It was very concise and explained the idea well enough where I think anyone a little versed in physics could easily understand. The only thing I could think of that I would maybe add is a conversation about some connections this idea has to other deeper parts of physics (if they exist). That way this is interesting phenomena can maybe be seen less as a quirk and more as a representative example we can use to better understand physics as a whole.