Abstract: polarized light can be categorized as linearly, circularly and elliptically polarized light, but the distribution of light intensity obtained in experiment is not in linear or elliptic shape, which is the so-called “linearly polarized light not linear, elliptically polarized light not elliptic”. The mismatch of intuition and experiment keeps bothering college students on the starting line of learning optics. Starting from physical essence of polarization in this article, the basic theory of polarization is traced while the linearly polarized light and elliptically polarized light are defined by mathematical performance of polarization. Then, experimental features of all kinds of polarized light is predicted by rigorous theoretical derivation. At last, by using experimental data, the nature of the polarized light, linearly polarized or elliptically polarized, can be theorical reduced.From theory to experiment and then from experiment to theory, a bridge between theory and experiment is constructed.

Key words: polarized light, light vector, light intensity, energy conservation