seeing the light - institute for plasma research the light optical illusions... · seeing the light...
TRANSCRIPT
Seeing the LightOptical (Visual) Illusions, J. C. Bose and Table Top Experimental Science
Rajarshi RoyInstitute for Physical Science and Technology
Department of PhysicsInstitute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics
University of Maryland, College ParkMD 20742 [email protected]
IPR HSNDFebruary, 2015
Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico on 4-7 October 2005International Conference on Control and Synchronization of
Dynamical Systems (CSDS-2005) Alexander Pisarchik, organizer
Seeing is believing!
Life begins
Our eyes
Optical illusions: simple apparatus, complex results!
Now you see it, now you don’t -
Perspectives in light, reference frames
Light and dark, feedback loops, brain and body
Wake up, look and listen!
Hermann von Helmholtz
(1821 –1894)
Foundations of
vision and hearing
Students: included
Max Planck
Wilhelm Wien
Arthur König
H A Rowland
A. A. Michelson
Michael I. Pupin
EYE
Opthalmoscope
Normal Retina
Retinitis Pigmentosa
A form of retinal dystrophy, RP is
caused by abnormalities of the photoreceptors (rods and cones) or the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) of the retina leading to progressive sight loss.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinitis_pigmentosa
Glaucoma
Glaucoma is an eye disease in which fluid pressure within your eye becomes
too high, damaging the delicate fibres of the optic nerve which carries visual
impulses from your eye to the brain. This damage is irreversible and can lead to
blindness in advanced cases. Glaucoma accounts for 40 per cent of blindness in
Singapore.
http://www.snec.com.sg/eye-conditions-and-treatments
Eye Accommodation
Accommodation change with age(from R. Gregory, Eye and Brain)
Eye problems
First eyeglasses – Venice 1286?
http://venetianca/be
st-eyeglasses-in-
world-venice.ht-
vascellari.blogspot.i
t/2008/08tml
Adrishya AlokJ. C. Bose
1888-1894: As German physicist Heinrich Hertz proves experimentally the existence of electromagnetic waves in free space, Bose starts pursuing follow-up microwave research, and ultimately succeeds in reducing the wave-length to the millimetre level.
1895: In a public demonstration at the Town Hall in
Kolkata, in presence of Sir William Mackenzie, the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, Bose ignites gunpowder and rings a bell at a distance using millimetre range wave-length microwaves. Writes an important essay, titled
Adrishya Alok (Invisible Light), in Bengali.
J. C. Bose (1858 – 1937)
Teachers at Cambridge: Lord Rayleigh (Physics), Sir Francis Darwin (Botany)
Millimeter wave research
J. C. BOSE: TABLE TOP EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE
Proc IEEE 86, 259-285 (1998)
P. K Bondyopadhyay
Sir J.C. Bose’s diode detector….
An early U S Patent from India
Detecting electromagnetic radiation
http://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Basis/transistor.html
The first person who applied semiconductors for practical purposes, was the Indian polymath Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937). He was a physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist, and writer of science fiction.
He invented several semiconductor devices, the first of which
was the Galena detector, which he demonstrated in a Royal
Institution Discourse in 1900.
He called his galena point contact detector an artificial retina (because by suitable arrangement it could be made to detect only light waves), a universal radiometer.
Bose was awarded the first patent for a semiconductor device in the world, namely for the Galena detector.
Artificial retina today
Attorney Dean Lloyd sits at his office in Palo Alto, California.
Lloyd, who went blind from retinitis pigmentosa, had experimental
electrodes implanted in the back of his right eye. Lloyd wears
black sunglasses containing a tiny camera and transmitter, a video
processor and battery pack on his belt. Lloyd is among only 10
people in the United States to undergo the procedure.
/www.vcstar.com/photos/2010/feb/24/88452/#ixzz1GDwjSvyv
-
G. Marconi (1874 – 1937)
Nobel Prize in Physics 1909 (with K. F. Braun)
Guglielmo Marconi was born at
Bologna, Italy, on April 25, 1874,
the second son of Giuseppe
Marconi, an Italian country
gentleman, and Annie Jameson, He
was educated privately at Bologna,
Florence and Leghorn. Even as a
boy he took a keen interest in
physical and electrical science and
studied the works of Maxwell,
Hertz, Righi, Lodge and others.
In 1895 he began laboratory
experiments at his father's
country estate at Pontecchio where
he succeeded in sending wireless
signals over a distance of one and
a half miles.
H S M (“Donald”) Coxeter
Geometer
(1907 – 2003)
Circle Limits III
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
JkhuMvFQWz4
Great website for illusions
• http://www.michaelbach.de/index.html
Recognizing faces
Recognizing Faces
Unrelated look-alikes ??
• http://www.google.com/search?q=francois+
brunelle&hl=en&safe=off&biw=1106&bih
=580&prmd=ivnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&sour
ce=univ&sa=X&ei=71gkTqzfAoj40gGrusn
ZAw&sqi=2&ved=0CDEQsAQ
• Francois Brunelle, Montreal
A “New” Illusion
Thompson effect - 1
Thompson effect - 2
Thompson, P. (1980)
Margaret Thatcher:
a new illusion. Perception 9:483–484
Head spin trick
http://www.artsology.com/giuseppe.php
Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) (Thanks, Brian H! )
Can the eye see a single photon?
ENERGY, QUANTA, AND VISION
SELIG HECHT, SIMON SHLAER, AND MAURICE HENRI PIRENNE
(From the Laboratory of Biophysics, Columbia University, New York)
(Received for publication, March 30, 1942)
The Journal of General Physiology
“the range of 54 to 148 quanta at the cornea becomes as an upper limit 5
to 14 quanta actually absorbed by the retinal rods. This small number of
quanta, in comparison with the large number of rods (500) involved,
precludes any significant two quantum absorptions per rod, and means
that in order to produce a visual effect, one quantum must be absorbed by
each of 5 to 14 rods in the retina.”
Response in the Living and Non-Living
Jagadis C. Bose
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1902
Bose and his students, 1928
Sitting from left to right: Meghnad Saha, Jagadis Chandra Bose,
J. C. Ghosh
Standing from left to right: S. Datta, S. N. Bose, D. M. Bose, N. R. Sen
J. N. Mukherjee, N. C. Nag
The Missing Circuit Element
World’s Simplest Memristor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZRIPdr1lug
A Hands-On Session for a future school?
More on the memristor
IEEE Circuits and Systems
Second Quarter 2013
SEEING THE LIGHT!
IPR is Exemplary in Recognizing
The Relevance of Table Top Experimental Science
Alongside Large Scale Science and Technology Projects
Thanks for listening!!
Father William
“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,“And your hair has become very white;And yet you incessantly stand on your head –Do you think, at your age, it is right?”
“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,“I feared it might injure the brain;But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,Why, I do it again and again.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
Visual latency
• Bio-feedback loop
• Measure latency time with a meter stick!
SQRT(2D/g)
(g ~ 10 m/s/s)
August 2, 2005
Abdus Salam (1926 – 1996)
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1979 (with Weinberg and Glashow)
Abdus Salam was born in Jhang,
a small town in what is now Pakistan,
in 1926. His father was an official
in the Department of Education
in a poor farming district. His family
had a long tradition of piety and learning.
When he cycled home from Lahore,
at the age of 14, after gaining the
highest marks ever recorded for the
Matriculation Examination at the
University of the Punjab, the whole
town turned out to welcome him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdBboiCsasI
“The case of the wandering light”The Autokinetic Illusion gives you the impression that a stationary object is moving in
front of the airplane's path; it is caused by staring at a fixed single point of light (ground
light or a star) in a totally dark and featureless background. This illusion can cause a
misperception that such a light is on a collision course with your aircraft
FAA, Office of Aerospace Medicine (OAM)
Washington, D.C
Autokinetic effect
• Alexander von Humboldt observed the phenomenon in 1799 while
looking at stars with the naked eye, but thought it was a real movement
of the stars. Thus he named them "Sternschwanken" i.e. "Swinging
Stars".
• G. Schweitzer (Schweitzer, 1857), an early German psychologist,
discovered that it was a subjective phenomenon. The US Navy started
studying this in 1945 in order to explain vertigo experiences related by
pilots. Today this "kinetic illusion" is categorized as a vestibular-
induced illusion, see vestibular system.
A LIGHT THOUGHT FOR THE ROAD
Application of the Scientific Method
A biological researcher experimented with a flea, which has six legs.
He puts it on the table and says: "Jump!"The flea jumps 3 meters, so he writes down to his log:
"The flea has jumped 3 meters."Afterward he cuts one of its legs off and says again: "Jump!"The flea jumps only 2 meters, so he writes down to the log:
"The flea has jumped 2 meters."Then he again cuts one more leg, again says: "Jump!"It jumped 1.5 meters, which was also registered in the log.
He continued cutting the fleas' legs until there were no legs left, he puts it on the table and says: "Jump!"The flea doesn't move.He says again: "Jump!"It doesn't move.So he writes down
"After removing all legs of the flea, the flea loses its ability to hear.“
A very nice reproducible experiment !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin
ning_Dancer#mediaviewer/File:S
pinning_Dancer.gif
The Spinning Dancer, also known as the silhouette illusion, is a kinetic,
bistable optical illusion resembling a pirouetting female dancer.
The illusion, created in 2003 by web designer Nobuyuki Kayahara,[1][2]
involves the apparent direction of motion of the figure. Some observers
initially see the figure as spinning clockwise (viewed from above) and
some anti-clockwise. Additionally, some may see the figure suddenly spin
in the opposite direction.[2]