I'm trying to find out in laymans terms, how a polariser works. Most of the physics is going right over my head.

So far I get the impression that light waves hit your eye (or the camera sensor) tilted at various angles across the axis of the waves' trajectory, but polarised light is always at the same angle (0 degrees?), and by having a filter that cuts across that angle, you absorb those waves whilst letting the waves at other angles through?

Everything I've read says that this only effects reflected light - the sun reflecting on the water or on smooth leaves, etc. But surely all light is reflected? The reason we can see water or leaves at all is that they're reflecting light already. The glare of the sun is just a particularly bright reflection.

So what's the difference? How come a filter removes the 'white' from the surface of a lake or the greyness from green leaves, but still allows the rest of the sun's light reflecting off them to reach the eye/sensor?

And if light is hitting the filter at random angles, doesn't that mean that some waves will just happen to be at the same angle as the polarised waves, so they'll inadvertently be absorbed too?

Also, do these filters only work with certain light sources, or can they have the same effect under tungsten, fluorescent, sodium, halogen etc?