Saturday, October 29, 2011

Transmitting light, via liquid, down a plastic tube



I've always been curious about fiber optics. And recently found out about liquid lightguides.

In a nutshell: you need a transmission medium with a high refractive index, clad in a medium with a low refractive index. The greater the difference, the easier you can get light to bounce around nicely.

I ended up using glycerine/glycerol as the transmission medium, Chemfluor 367 as the cladding.

Pictures below: - bit more of an intense light burst, and one of my boys having fun shining the light in one end of a tube, and getting it out the other side :)


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