-
Just Curious
- Thread starter eiqu7aha
- Start date
BubbuClinton
Junior Member
Re: Just Curious
I guess it would depend on the type of lasers you were using. If they were simple light pen lasers you would have a red glowing object. If they were solid particle lasers with high energy sources, it would be hard to get all 1000 lasers pointed on the same objects because it would evaporate pretty quickly.
Just a thought
Bubbu
_____________________
StarLord
Senior Member
Re: Just Curious
Bubbu,
This actually reminds me of a mental experiment involving several cases of bubblegum, a large room and a thousand feet of those mirror tiles made up of 1/2"x1/2" squares and a good strong laser pointer.
Start the laser pen, grab a tiny mirror piece stick it to a wall with a wad of gum, follow the red dot, stick a new mirror, follow the red dot, stick a new mirror................... After a few days the room would look insane. However, fill it with smoke and switch on the laser pen. Here comes the question of the experiment, with tens of thousands of tiny mirrors, would you be able to see the light hit the last tile (you thoughtfully marked it knowing this question was coming) a split second or so after the light went on and even more important, would you be able to see the last of it hit when it went off?
thenumbersix
Member
Re: Just Curious
Should be possible, with enough mirrors and a life time obsession
To add, if you had your mirrors arranged so that the 'captured' light kept going around and around, could you 'store' the light for later use ?virtualgirl
Member
Re: Just Curious
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(\"thenumbersix\")</div>Should be possible, with enough mirrors and a life time obsession
To add, if you had your mirrors arranged so that the 'captured' light kept going around and around, could you 'store' the light for later use ?[/b]
If you are speaking of the same lasers I'm thinking of, I would think it would eventually burn a hole through your mirror. Mirror is only painted glass and will melt at around 1200 degrees Fh.
thenumbersix
Member
Re: Just Curious
Was thinking of sunlight on this one. Had an idea years ago to make a 'snail shell' of mirrors to catch sunlight all day, then release it at night into a fibre optic 'lighting system', have always believed sunlight to be more wholesome in some way than artificial light.
Obviously refraction takes away 4% of all the photons but even they might be trapable, with a complex enough system, and I'm assuming refraction will take place on the glass surface of the mirror here, maybe a perfect metal surface would be more efficient ?
Question is, would it 'charge up' through the day and allow for a longer disappation or would there just be a blast of light as you opened it, there must be some sort of energy accumulation if it were possible. Solar panels can convert light into energy all day long...?
Harte
Senior Member
Re: Just Curious
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(\"StarLord\")</div>
Google Michelson-Morley experiment for an interesting twist on this idea and to see how relativity was born.
The short answer to both questions is no, unless you use your eyeball as the last tile.
Long answer, yes if you had a good strong laser, a lot more of the mirrors that you say, a very large room and a lot of time on your hands.
The speed of light was originally measured in this way. Only they used light beamed from one mountaintop to another and reflected back. They were unable to actually see the light start and stop the way you describe. See the Michelson-Morley Experiment for what this led to.
HarteHeinrich Hundekok
Junior Member
Re: Just Curious
Thenumbersix,
Fun idea, but I don't think It'll work. You might want to try with fibre optics - I've heard that they are super conductors when it comes to light. But I'm not sure, though...
Anyway, once you open up your jar-o-light it will empty as fast as the time it takes a lightwave to get from one end of your contraption to the other - mere millionths of a second. So don't look into it while opening!
So far no good way of storing light has been invented. Instead we store energy in chemical compounds like in batteries. Energy can be stored as kinetic energy in a clock-spring too, but the amount is limited. Finally there has been developed a "kinetic battery" made up of a wheel spinning very fast inside an airtight container. It can then be recarged or emptied by using electromagnets embedded in the mechanism.
Happy inventing!
H.H.