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A mate of mine said he was having a bit of trouble wrapping his head around circular polarisation. I thought of a novel way of illustrating it that I hope helps others who are curious about physics but perhaps are not formally training physicists (and it served as a fun way for me to hone my Blender 3D skills).
The main idea behind the approach is to only represent the final physical E field as the typical vector "spikes" and use a novel colour map technique to model the contributing linear polarised Ex and Ey field components that are essentially only mathematical constructs (because they don't represent a unique decomposition, the exact same thing can be achieved by weighted contributions of opposing circularly polarised solutions).
The Blender 3D animations are supplemented by analysis and classic x vs y field strength/phase animations using Wolfram Mathematica.
The video is about the physics, not about the Blender 3D techniques (there may also be video about that also at some stage for Blender users).
The main reference is a Wikipedia article that seems to be largely based on the seminal 'Classic Electromagnetism, 3rd. Ed.' by Jackson (2025), which you can easily find online as a PDF download. I've adapted some of the notations for use in Wolfram Mathematica.
The video is available for non-commercial use under full-attribution with no derivatives licensing. You are most welcome to use the video in a non-commercial education setting if you feel it is of benefit.
