High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Polarization is a property of certain types of waves that describes the orientation of their oscillations. Electromagnetic waves such as light exhibit polarization; acoustic waves (sound waves) in a gas or liquid do not have polarization because the direction of vibration and direction of propagation are the same. By convention, the polarization of light is described by specifying the orientation of the wave's electric field at a point in space over one period of the oscillation. When light travels in free space, in most cases it propagates as a transverse wave?the polarization is perpendicular to the wave's direction of travel.