1. An optical computing device to determine a characteristic of a sample, the optical computing device comprising: electromagnetic radiation that optically interacts with a sample to produce sample-interacted light; a first polarizer positioned to optically interact with the sample-interacted light to produce first polarized light; a second polarizer positioned to optically interact with the first polarized light to produce second polarized light; and a detector positioned to measure the second polarized light and thereby generate a signal utilized to determine a characteristic of the sample.