I noticed the Kerr Cell was mentioned in another thread. Has anyone here ever made one of these that worked? Mine didn't!
Many years ago I made a Kerr Cell based on a Tuning Capacitor sitting in a transparent container and filled with Nitrobenzene. Either side sat a (crossed) polarised film. The light shone across and through the tuning capacitor vanes.
The Nitrobenzene was viciously poisonous stuff and I originally found it hard to obtain. It had a sickly-sweet smell and apparently once you had smelt it, it was already 'too late'. I was very careful and only ever experienced the merest whiff... Nevertheless legend has it that nitrobenzene was used in perfume in the 1930s !!! For years after constructing this cell, I stored it and the bottle of nitrobenzene rather like I would nuclear waste - sealed in an inaccessible corner of a brick shithouse.
Anyway, I fired the thing up and eventually worked up to 1000 volts across the vanes before my courage failed. I didn't want it to explode, showering me and the neighbourhood with nitrobenzene! I never observed any polarising shift in the light, and the cell was damned inefficient optically anyway.
Anyone had more luck?
Steve O