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:: Wednesday, April 24, 2002 ::

Moon Power

What will they think of next? Solar power generated on the moon, beamed back to Earth.

See the article published in The Industrial Physicist (April/May 2002) [PDF file]

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Hydrogel-Based Nanoparticles Make Photonic Crystals

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers reported at the 223d national meeting of the American Chemical Society that they have created hydrogel-based nanoparticles that could be used to fabricate photonic crystals with adjustable optical properties (See an article about this at UniSci here). This optical tuning can be accomplished via the thermal adjustment of the water contained within the particles. The nanoparticles could be used to make crystals designed to transfer a narrow range of wavelengths, so that data carried on optical fibers at specific wavelengths can be retrieved.

The way I understand it, if you can have such fine and easy discrimination between wavelengths as they claim, then the bandwidth of a single fiber would be tremendous. More specifically, the frequency (i.e. wavelength) resolution within the bandwidth would be significantly increased. Imagine all the possible wavelengths that could now be carrying information!

The medical applications could include new diagnostics tools based on particles that react in the presence of certain biological molecules. "We have a very simple and easy processing method for taking one type of particle and creating a whole host of optical materials from it, as opposed to having to synthesize a new particle for each optical material you would like," boasted Georgia Tech researcher Andrew Lyon. Heating the material above the transition temperature converts it to a fluid state that can be cast, molded, or spin-coated with standard processing methods.

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Travelling degrades your static memories.

If an image is worth a thousand words, then certainly a degraded image loses some of its wordiness. An unfortunate side effect of intensified airport pre-boarding security checks since 2001.09.11 has been degraded photographs. Now that hand checking items has become a rarity, everything -- including precious moments captured on film -- must be sent through an x-ray scanner. Although photographic film is exposed with visible light photons, high energy x-ray photons can in most cases over-expose film, generating streaking artifacts, and cause a general increase in brightness and speckly noise in the resulting developed image.

So, what's a jet-setting photographer to do? Ideally, one should avoid airport security checkpoints altogether. Try travelling by car, bus, train, or boat whenever possible. If this is not feasible, and plane travel is inevitable, try to reduce the total number of x-ray checks your film passes through before it is developed: minimize the number of stopovers, try to insist on a manual check of film canisters, and purchase film at the destination. Kodak (see the Technical Information Bulletin on Baggage X-ray Scanning Effects on Film) claims that 5 x-ray security scans is the typical threshold 'dose' before significant image degradation occurs on low speed (up to 400) film; higher speed film is more sensitive to light, and thus more susceptible to x-ray damage. If image quality is paramount and money is no object, an elegant solution is to courier the film back home -- check with the courier company first in case they irradiate their packages!

Is all this too much of a hassle? I think so. Do you believe that impeccable fidelity of visual memories is a basic human right? I do.

I use a digital camera.

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