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what do you think of my idea?

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cyb0rg777

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I have had a lot of junk electronics laying around so I have been racking my brain as what to do with it. I was thinking about lasers because I have some laser pointers and optical drives laying around. I thought it would be great if you could make a display out of a laser pointer. I know you can make a laser projector out of mirrors and stepper motors but it wasn't very attractive to me. I finally figured out a way that will most likely work.

A drop of water.

If you have a stream of water and it is uncharged and you charge an object with static electricity it will bend the stream. So if you suspend a drop of water with a laser shining through it ,then charge it ,MAYBE an opposite charge field placed next to it will distort the drop of water enough to bend the laser in the desired direction.

Well what do you guys think?
 
I think it is unfeasible, because streams of water are always changing and never consistent. It's already hard enough to figure out how you need to distort the water to get what you want, let alone how to compensate for the changes in the stream, let alone how to measure the changes in the first place. Don't forget about the inertia of the water too. That aside, I'm pretty streams of water do not pass light nearly as well as still water.

If it was a drop of water, you would still need to suspend it somehow and figure out it's shape and everything above would still hold. Also, the drop of water is probably of comparable width to the laser beam so you would get distortion anyways- it would not be like a flat lense.

if it was anything bigger than a drop it would not be able to react in time, be harder to suspend, and be even harder to control with electrostatic fields.
 
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I think it's worth some experiments .Anyone can run a stream of tap water and put something like a ballon you rubbed on your head next to it and watch the stream bend. I have a camera flash to generate the deflection voltage. But i need batteries for my laser pointer,rats.I did get enough light out of the batteries to tell that a round drop will distort the beam.I was thinking to suspend the drop horizontally so gravity would have less effect. I may need to experiment with size of the fixture holding the drop and amount of water.If you get the drop big enough it will be pretty flat on top .if you seal the top air pressure will hold a larger drop inside.
 
Glue a rod to the voice coil of a speaker. Any small one will show if this works ok. Place your water drop on top of the rod and shine the laser through the drop. Apply a signal to the speaker and see what it does - should take less than 10 minutes to set this up.
 
That's very interesting. I have been thinking about the design of the fixture I need for my experiment.Wikipedia is quite useful. I have been reading about lasers,refraction,lenses,Eelectrical and magnetic properties ,and whatever else looks interesting. Ordinary water is really very fascinating.

j.p.bill I think your experiment would test the optical properties of water but I think the optical properties are going to be tricky. I can't find much info on useful optical properties of water. It will be difficult to get the beam through at all without undesired distortion. I want to first check on the effects of a electrostatic field on the drop of water.
 
cyb0rg777 said:
I have had a lot of junk electronics laying around so I have been racking my brain as what to do with it. I was thinking about lasers because I have some laser pointers and optical drives laying around. I thought it would be great if you could make a display out of a laser pointer. I know you can make a laser projector out of mirrors and stepper motors but it wasn't very attractive to me. I finally figured out a way that will most likely work.

A drop of water.

If you have a stream of water and it is uncharged and you charge an object with static electricity it will bend the stream. So if you suspend a drop of water with a laser shining through it ,then charge it ,MAYBE an opposite charge field placed next to it will distort the drop of water enough to bend the laser in the desired direction.

Well what do you guys think?
You could rig a mirror to two speaker voice coils and make your own lissajous :)

Dan
 
Something like that is probably more realistic than a computer display.I was thinking that if you wanted a display that was 640x480 @ 60 hz ,then the horizontal refresh would be 60x480 =28.8khz(correct me if I'm wrong).There's no way a drop of water will move that fast. Maybe it would be useful for something though.
 
cyb0rg777 said:
Something like that is probably more realistic than a computer display.I was thinking that if you wanted a display that was 640x480 @ 60 hz ,then the horizontal refresh would be 60x480 =28.8khz(correct me if I'm wrong).There's no way a drop of water will move that fast. Maybe it would be useful for something though.
I believe they are experimenting with something similar to that for a camera lens.
 
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