For several years we have included discussions aboutinsect vision in the optics units of our introductoryphysics courses. This topic is a natural extension ofdemonstrations involving Brewster's reflection and Rayleighscattering of polarized light because many insects heavily relyon optical polarization for navigation and communication.Students, especially those majoring in the life sciences, tendto find the conversation intriguing because of its interdisci-plinary context. To make it even more appealing, we recentlycreated a laboratory component that allows students to usedigital cameras and polarizing filters to create polarizationmaps of environmental scenes and insect bodies. In thispaper we describe how to do so with ImageJ, a widely usedand freely available image processing program that is suitablefor students with no programming experience.
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