Thursday, January 24, 2008

My glasses give me superpowers

I'm...Spectrum Analyzer Woman! My glasses, being both high-index and ridiculously thick at the edges, tend to separate out colors. I've noticed this before - usually it shows up as a blue shadow on one side of the object and a yellow shadow on the other side. Flat-panel computer screens do it bad. When I look at neon lights I can sometimes separate out the emission lines. The other day, though, I noticed for the first time that it works on the fluorescent lights in my bathroom. I happened to be standing in just the right place such that a narrow reflection from the shower door separated out and showed the dominant emission lines, even though the bulb produces white light. There's a line in blue quite far from the actual reflection, a green line closer to it, and a red line just on the other side of the reflection. Needless to say, this is way cooler than yellow and blue shadows. Next I'm going to see if I can get a picture of this with my camera.

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