Geeking Out in 3D
Recently, my wife and I went and saw Avatar in 3D at the local cinema. They used RealD 3D glasses that look just like sunglasses. Rather than dropping ours in the recycling bin after the movie, I took them back to the lab to play with, because they have some interesting optical properties.
Here’s a view through one of the lenses of the big LCD display in the lab:
And here’s a view of the same thing, but with the glasses flipped around so that they are “backwards” (i.e., the light is going through the lens in the opposite direction as before):
At first glance, it would seem absurd to have light behave so differently when going forwards or backwards through the glasses. However, there is an interesting explanation for why this occurs.
Read more…