Seeing the LightOptical (Visual) Illusions, J. C. Bose and Table Top Experimental Science

Rajarshi RoyInstitute for Physical Science and Technology

Department of PhysicsInstitute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics

University of Maryland, College ParkMD 20742 USArroy@umd.edu

IPR HSNDFebruary, 2015

Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico on 4-7 October 2005International Conference on Control and Synchronization of

Dynamical Systems (CSDS-2005) Alexander Pisarchik, organizer

Seeing is believing!

Life begins

Our eyes

Optical illusions: simple apparatus, complex results!

Now you see it, now you don’t -

Perspectives in light, reference frames

Light and dark, feedback loops, brain and body

Wake up, look and listen!

Hermann von Helmholtz

(1821 –1894)

Foundations of

vision and hearing

Students: included

Max Planck

Wilhelm Wien

Arthur König

H A Rowland

A. A. Michelson

Michael I. Pupin

EYE

Opthalmoscope

Normal Retina

Retinitis Pigmentosa

A form of retinal dystrophy, RP is

caused by abnormalities of the photoreceptors (rods and cones) or the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) of the retina leading to progressive sight loss.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinitis_pigmentosa

Glaucoma

Glaucoma is an eye disease in which fluid pressure within your eye becomes

too high, damaging the delicate fibres of the optic nerve which carries visual

impulses from your eye to the brain. This damage is irreversible and can lead to

blindness in advanced cases. Glaucoma accounts for 40 per cent of blindness in

Singapore.

http://www.snec.com.sg/eye-conditions-and-treatments

Eye Accommodation

Accommodation change with age(from R. Gregory, Eye and Brain)

Eye problems

First eyeglasses – Venice 1286?

http://venetianca/be

st-eyeglasses-in-

world-venice.ht-

vascellari.blogspot.i

t/2008/08tml

Adrishya AlokJ. C. Bose

1888-1894: As German physicist Heinrich Hertz proves experimentally the existence of electromagnetic waves in free space, Bose starts pursuing follow-up microwave research, and ultimately succeeds in reducing the wave-length to the millimetre level.

1895: In a public demonstration at the Town Hall in

Kolkata, in presence of Sir William Mackenzie, the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, Bose ignites gunpowder and rings a bell at a distance using millimetre range wave-length microwaves. Writes an important essay, titled

Adrishya Alok (Invisible Light), in Bengali.

J. C. Bose (1858 – 1937)

Teachers at Cambridge: Lord Rayleigh (Physics), Sir Francis Darwin (Botany)

Millimeter wave research

J. C. BOSE: TABLE TOP EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE

Proc IEEE 86, 259-285 (1998)

P. K Bondyopadhyay

Sir J.C. Bose’s diode detector….

An early U S Patent from India

Detecting electromagnetic radiation

http://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Basis/transistor.html

The first person who applied semiconductors for practical purposes, was the Indian polymath Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937). He was a physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist, and writer of science fiction.

He invented several semiconductor devices, the first of which

was the Galena detector, which he demonstrated in a Royal

Institution Discourse in 1900.

He called his galena point contact detector an artificial retina (because by suitable arrangement it could be made to detect only light waves), a universal radiometer.

Bose was awarded the first patent for a semiconductor device in the world, namely for the Galena detector.

Artificial retina today

Attorney Dean Lloyd sits at his office in Palo Alto, California.

Lloyd, who went blind from retinitis pigmentosa, had experimental

electrodes implanted in the back of his right eye. Lloyd wears

black sunglasses containing a tiny camera and transmitter, a video

processor and battery pack on his belt. Lloyd is among only 10

people in the United States to undergo the procedure.

/www.vcstar.com/photos/2010/feb/24/88452/#ixzz1GDwjSvyv

-

G. Marconi (1874 – 1937)

Nobel Prize in Physics 1909 (with K. F. Braun)

Guglielmo Marconi was born at

Bologna, Italy, on April 25, 1874,

the second son of Giuseppe

Marconi, an Italian country

gentleman, and Annie Jameson, He

was educated privately at Bologna,

Florence and Leghorn. Even as a

boy he took a keen interest in

physical and electrical science and

studied the works of Maxwell,

Hertz, Righi, Lodge and others.

In 1895 he began laboratory

experiments at his father's

country estate at Pontecchio where

he succeeded in sending wireless

signals over a distance of one and

a half miles.

H S M (“Donald”) Coxeter

Geometer

(1907 – 2003)

Circle Limits III

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

JkhuMvFQWz4

Great website for illusions

• http://www.michaelbach.de/index.html

Recognizing faces

Recognizing Faces

Unrelated look-alikes ??

• http://www.google.com/search?q=francois+

brunelle&hl=en&safe=off&biw=1106&bih

=580&prmd=ivnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&sour

ce=univ&sa=X&ei=71gkTqzfAoj40gGrusn

ZAw&sqi=2&ved=0CDEQsAQ

• Francois Brunelle, Montreal

A “New” Illusion

Thompson effect - 1

Thompson effect - 2

Thompson, P. (1980)

Margaret Thatcher:

a new illusion. Perception 9:483–484

Head spin trick

http://www.artsology.com/giuseppe.php

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) (Thanks, Brian H! )

Can the eye see a single photon?

ENERGY, QUANTA, AND VISION

SELIG HECHT, SIMON SHLAER, AND MAURICE HENRI PIRENNE

(From the Laboratory of Biophysics, Columbia University, New York)

(Received for publication, March 30, 1942)

The Journal of General Physiology

“the range of 54 to 148 quanta at the cornea becomes as an upper limit 5

to 14 quanta actually absorbed by the retinal rods. This small number of

quanta, in comparison with the large number of rods (500) involved,

precludes any significant two quantum absorptions per rod, and means

that in order to produce a visual effect, one quantum must be absorbed by

each of 5 to 14 rods in the retina.”

Response in the Living and Non-Living

Jagadis C. Bose

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

NEW YORK AND BOMBAY

1902

Bose and his students, 1928

Sitting from left to right: Meghnad Saha, Jagadis Chandra Bose,

J. C. Ghosh

Standing from left to right: S. Datta, S. N. Bose, D. M. Bose, N. R. Sen

J. N. Mukherjee, N. C. Nag

The Missing Circuit Element

World’s Simplest Memristor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZRIPdr1lug

A Hands-On Session for a future school?

More on the memristor

IEEE Circuits and Systems

Second Quarter 2013

SEEING THE LIGHT!

IPR is Exemplary in Recognizing

The Relevance of Table Top Experimental Science

Alongside Large Scale Science and Technology Projects

Thanks for listening!!

Father William

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,“And your hair has become very white;And yet you incessantly stand on your head –Do you think, at your age, it is right?”

“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,“I feared it might injure the brain;But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,Why, I do it again and again.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

Visual latency

• Bio-feedback loop

• Measure latency time with a meter stick!

SQRT(2D/g)

(g ~ 10 m/s/s)

August 2, 2005

Abdus Salam (1926 – 1996)

Nobel Prize in Physics, 1979 (with Weinberg and Glashow)

Abdus Salam was born in Jhang,

a small town in what is now Pakistan,

in 1926. His father was an official

in the Department of Education

in a poor farming district. His family

had a long tradition of piety and learning.

When he cycled home from Lahore,

at the age of 14, after gaining the

highest marks ever recorded for the

Matriculation Examination at the

University of the Punjab, the whole

town turned out to welcome him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdBboiCsasI

“The case of the wandering light”The Autokinetic Illusion gives you the impression that a stationary object is moving in

front of the airplane's path; it is caused by staring at a fixed single point of light (ground

light or a star) in a totally dark and featureless background. This illusion can cause a

misperception that such a light is on a collision course with your aircraft

FAA, Office of Aerospace Medicine (OAM)

Washington, D.C

Autokinetic effect

• Alexander von Humboldt observed the phenomenon in 1799 while

looking at stars with the naked eye, but thought it was a real movement

of the stars. Thus he named them "Sternschwanken" i.e. "Swinging

Stars".

• G. Schweitzer (Schweitzer, 1857), an early German psychologist,

discovered that it was a subjective phenomenon. The US Navy started

studying this in 1945 in order to explain vertigo experiences related by

pilots. Today this "kinetic illusion" is categorized as a vestibular-

induced illusion, see vestibular system.

A LIGHT THOUGHT FOR THE ROAD

Application of the Scientific Method

A biological researcher experimented with a flea, which has six legs.

He puts it on the table and says: "Jump!"The flea jumps 3 meters, so he writes down to his log:

"The flea has jumped 3 meters."Afterward he cuts one of its legs off and says again: "Jump!"The flea jumps only 2 meters, so he writes down to the log:

"The flea has jumped 2 meters."Then he again cuts one more leg, again says: "Jump!"It jumped 1.5 meters, which was also registered in the log.

He continued cutting the fleas' legs until there were no legs left, he puts it on the table and says: "Jump!"The flea doesn't move.He says again: "Jump!"It doesn't move.So he writes down

"After removing all legs of the flea, the flea loses its ability to hear.“

A very nice reproducible experiment !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin

ning_Dancer#mediaviewer/File:S

pinning_Dancer.gif

The Spinning Dancer, also known as the silhouette illusion, is a kinetic,

bistable optical illusion resembling a pirouetting female dancer.

The illusion, created in 2003 by web designer Nobuyuki Kayahara,[1][2]

involves the apparent direction of motion of the figure. Some observers

initially see the figure as spinning clockwise (viewed from above) and

some anti-clockwise. Additionally, some may see the figure suddenly spin

in the opposite direction.[2]