A smart gas that manipulates light.A smart glass that manipulates light By carefully fusing multiple layers of glass, each of which bends light slightly more or less than adjacent layers, scientists at Isotec Ltd. in Tucson, Ariz., have made specialty glasses that guide light beams along specific, even winding, courses the way wires guide electricity. These "gradient gradient In mathematics, a differential operator applied to a three-dimensional vector-valued function to yield a vector whose three components are the partial derivatives of the function with respect to its three variables. The symbol for gradient is ∇. refractive index A property of a material that changes the speed of light, computed as the ratio of the speed of light in a vacuum to the speed of light through the material. When light travels at an angle between two different materials, their refractive indices determine the angle of transmission " (GRIN) materials could serve in emerging technologies such as optical computers and photonic Dealing with light (photons). See photon and photonics. circuitry, suggests Richard Blankenbecler, a physicist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S. , who also is a consultant for Isotec. Photonic devices resemble electronic devices, but work by manipulating photons and light beams instead of electrons and currents. Company spokesman Paul Dempewolf says the Isotec process costs less, takes less time and produces a wider range of light-piping glasses than existing techniques for making GRIN materials. |
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