While waiting for a 3D movie to start, I was playing with the glasses they give you. I understand each lens has different polarized filters, so the left and right superimposed images on the screen go to the correct eyes.
The first thing that tripped me up was that rotating the glasses didn't affect the light that passes through it. After searching I bit I discovered about circular polarization, which ignores the angle of the filter and seems to be the standard for cinema glasses.
The second thing that tripped me up were the wall lamps. When looking through one lens, the light seemed to have a bluish color. From the other, a reddish/orange color. It was subtle, but other people confirmed seeing it.
I figured the lamp's white light had blue and red components, which are of different wavelengths (almost opposite in the visible spectrum, if I remember correctly), but what does the wavelength have to do with circularly polarized filters? And if this line of thought is correct, why does it seems to divide the visible spectrum?
Best Answer
Some 3D glasses use narrow-band filters rather than polarization, which is quite clever.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_3D for details.
The reason the light looked different through each eye is that the light spectrum isn't uniform across the visible wavelength. Thus, when different parts of that spectrum are viewed (through the left or right lenses), you get light that's not quite white, and not quite the same.