Make Your Screen 3D With Cheap Cellophane
from the easy...-and-cheap... dept
A researcher looking for material to use as a half-wave plate to rotate the polarization of light coming from a computer LCD screen to make things appear in 3D made an odd discovery. After testing out many different materials, including some very expensive, custom made half-plates, it turns out that cheap cellophane ($3/roll) worked the best. Sounds like those half-plate makers might not have much of a market any more. Of course, you shouldn't just wrap your monitor in cellophane and expect things in 3D. It's a bit more complicated. First, it only works on LCD screens, and still requires specially polarized glasses. Then, it involves splitting the screen image in two, and covering one side with the cellophane (25 micron thickness, with Lewiscraft being the brand of the best kind). So, it's not quite a huge discovery - but it is still amusing that the $3 roll of plastic wrap beat out multi-thousand dollar specially made screens. Of course, no one seems to have asked him why he ended up testing out cellophane in the first place. Still, it's good to see researchers trying out all different solutions, instead of assuming that a specially built expensive one would automatically be the best.
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