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As curious as I am, I opened up the LCD screen of an old laptop that would have been thrown away otherwise.
What I found inside seemed to be the most interesting material ever! There were multiple sheets of plastic that looked to be metallic and shiny, but reflected and diffused light in strange ways.
Trying to come up with a fun project, I settled on diffuser glasses.
--I honestly do not know what to call these things, polarizers or diffusers. Whatever they may be, please let me know, so I can put up the correct information!
I'll take you step by step to make these fun, yet disorienting glasses.
Note: I will not be responsible for broken monitors or concussions! :)
What it looks like:
Thank you to my friend for the idea!
What I found inside seemed to be the most interesting material ever! There were multiple sheets of plastic that looked to be metallic and shiny, but reflected and diffused light in strange ways.
Trying to come up with a fun project, I settled on diffuser glasses.
--I honestly do not know what to call these things, polarizers or diffusers. Whatever they may be, please let me know, so I can put up the correct information!
I'll take you step by step to make these fun, yet disorienting glasses.
Note: I will not be responsible for broken monitors or concussions! :)
What it looks like:
Thank you to my friend for the idea!
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Signing UpStep 1Materials
There is a fairly short list of materials
1. An old laptop or some spare sheets of this diffuser stuff. Old cellphones or anything with an LCD should work.
2. RealD 3D Glasses! (I got mine from Avatar, but really any fairly large glasses without lenses are fine)
3. Flat and phillips head screwdrivers
4. Small pocketknife, or anything with a thin blade that gives you good leverage
5. Scissors
6. White paper
7. Pencil
8. Scotch tape
1. An old laptop or some spare sheets of this diffuser stuff. Old cellphones or anything with an LCD should work.
2. RealD 3D Glasses! (I got mine from Avatar, but really any fairly large glasses without lenses are fine)
3. Flat and phillips head screwdrivers
4. Small pocketknife, or anything with a thin blade that gives you good leverage
5. Scissors
6. White paper
7. Pencil
8. Scotch tape
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But this thin plastic stuff isn't a fresnel lens or a polariser,
but a diffraction grid!
This grid is used in lcd screens to separate colors from the white light, in order to have Red, blue or green pixels! This explain why you can see some "rainbows" with your glasses :)
http://www.howstuffworks.com/monitor.htm
The lenses you took OUT of the real3d glasses WERE polarized - you can tell if they're polarized if they change transparency as you change the angle of two layered sheets...try it with the lenses you took out!
Holding pairs of glasses face to face cancels because it puts a left and a right in front of each other (vert + horizontal) which is opaque, but if you hold the glasses face to face and rotate one pair of glasses it becomes semitransparent based on the angle.
The lenses he is putting INTO the old frames: fresnell lenses.
There should be one combination looking through them where it will go completely opaque no matter what hold them. Just flip one around and it will go completely black when trying to look through both no matter how you rotate them. Which is the behaviour mine exhibited.
It's possible some theatres are still using linear polarization if they already had that fitted, but as far as i knew all the new installations were using circular.
They do use the single projector with an alternating filter that alternates the right/left handedness of the image. You can read all about it on the RealD wiki page or on their site.
I kept the lenses to try making a poor-man's polarizing camera filter for shooting through water. I'' post an instructable if it works.
They are linear. 'never totally opaque' is because they are not perfect polarizers - very few materials are, and definitely not plastic 3 dollar lenses.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/3-d-glasses2.htm
*image blatantly ripped off from the howwstuffworks.com website.
Note the arrows are INCORRECT in this picture - vertical slits allow VERTICALLY polarized image to pass through, not opposite as it shows. Howstuffworks also has the red/blue analglyph glasses image backwards - a red filter only allows the red image through, not the blue image as shown.
Peace
There's a short write up on RealD here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealD_Cinema
And circular polarization here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_polarization
Circular polarization is somewhat rare in nature, though it is thought some shrimp can actually detect circular polarized light.
just seems it would be hard to produce a circularly polarized lense - only allowing one rotation of em to pass through.
I had also at the time (80ties) a hand watch, it was called Elektronika 5. It had same type screen, where I took the polarizer sheet out. I screwed my large game polarizer sheet to the inside of my sunglases. Now I could see my watch alone - my friends were amazed.