system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What happens to the photons that are 'blocked' by a polarizer?

When light passes through a polarizer, some proportion of it passes through (taking on the polarization of the polarizer) and some proportion is blocked.

What happens to the blocked photons? Are they absorbed and scattered? Converted into heat? Into kinetic energy (pushing the polarizer)?
gpt
Absorbed, usually. That'll have two effects: pushing the polarizer and heating it slightly. Conservation of momentum requires the former, conservation of energy the latter.

It is possible to polarize light using reflection or refraction techniques, but that often depends on angles and/or wavelengths, so that is usually only used in specialized cases. In those cases, (almost) none of the light is absorbed or blocked but is either reflected or bent differently to create two polarized beams of light.