Will table sugar twist polarized light? I recently saw this awesome video by Steve Mould where he explained that a sugar solution in water will turn polarized light in the clockwise direction.
The explanation basically boils down to sugar molecules (glucose) having a handedness (they are chiral) and that linearly polarized light can be thought of as a superposition of circular polarized light in opposite directions which experience a different refractive index when interacting with the sugar solution.
Now to my question; If I want to replicate this experiment at home, will regular table sugar work, or do I need pure glucose, and if that is the case where can I get it?
Many thanks!
Edit 1: I will get back with the results I get from using table sugar when I have performed the experiment.
Edit 2: I did the experiment using half water half sugar, basically simple syrup, and the result was excellent. The optical rotation was very apparent.
 A: Yes, I helped my daughter do this demonstration for her sixth grade science project. She used plain table sugar and a laser pointer as the light source.  Having a monochromatic source makes it a little clearer.  If you have different color laser pointers it would be interesting to demonstrate wavelength dependence.
A: Chemically, table sugar is sucrose, whose molecule is basically a unit of glucose and a unit of fructose connected together. To know the expected amount of rotation of polarization for a given substance, see the table of specific rotations.
In particular, for D-glucose specific rotation is $+52.7°\,\mathrm{dm}^{-1}\,\mathrm{cm}^3\,\mathrm{g}^{-1}$, while for D-sucrose it's $+66.37°\,\mathrm{dm}^{-1}\,\mathrm{cm}^3\,\mathrm{g}^{-1}$, which is actually even larger than that of D-glucose. So yes, you should be able to succeed with the experiment using table sugar instead of glucose.
A: I have successfully done this demonstration in my classes using table sugar.  I place a polarizer on an old-fashioned overhead projector, hold a crossed polarizer above it to block the light, and then insert a beaker of sugar solution between the two.  I usually use a solution of 1:1 sugar-to-water (by volume), basically a "simple syrup";  and I use a column depth of about 10 cm or so.
If I remember correctly, the transmitted light has a distinct bluish color when you do this, which I assume is due to the frequency dependence of the specific rotation.
