Hey Ray: Invisibility lens
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Sometimes it would be nice to disappear, at least for a little bit. So, is there a way to invisibility?
In the past, we did an experiment with invisibility goop - which you can read right here!
This time we are going to investigate invisibility with something less messy. Something called a Lubor's Lens, a special type of lens that can make things disappear.
With this lens, you can see an object when the lens is oriented one way, but when you turn the lens, the object disappears!
We see things when light bounces off objects then back to our eyes. This lens seems to interrupt that.
The better way to see how a Lubor's Lens makes things disappear is to see what happens to light when it passes through. To best see what happens, we are going to use a laser pointer.
With no lens in front of it, the laser pointer creates a dot.
When you shine the laser through the lens, that dot is stretched into a long line.
When you stack two of these lenses on top of each other, you get weird light patterns on the lens. These are major clues into how this works.
We know the light's direction is changed as it passes through the lens. This forces you to see the light bouncing back from the sides of the object.
The light in the following images is bouncing from an angle, off the vertical wood dowel rods on either side of the lens. That light is bent straight forward, forcing you to see the objects on either side of the pepper.
When the lens is in front of the pepper, you are actually seeing the dowel rods on either side of the pepper.
This also causes a sort of "stretching effect" for things on either side of the lens. You can see how my fingers look sort of stretched out in the following image.
When you look that closely, you can see how this illusion happens. If you should try this at home, remember that with the way the light is redirected, these Lubor's Lenses work best with straight objects incorporated into the experiment.