Klarinet Archive - Posting 000893.txt from 2000/08

From: Bilwright@-----.net (William Wright)
Subj: Re: [kl] red plastic mouthpiece?
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2000 21:38:13 -0400

<><> Lelia wrote:
With a strong enough back-light, apparently any mouthpiece will refract
a color, even though it reflects black!

This is Sunday. Off-topic anecdotes are legal on Sundays, aren't
they?

One of my customers had a contract to build theme park rides for
Hershey's in Pennsylvania. The mechanics and electronics of those rides
were fascinating, but one of my customer's ideas was to cast a woman's
body out of resin. (I sold him the resin.)
From the rear, the woman was to appear shapely with an ...ummm,
well-defined derriere. When she began to spin to a frontal stance, the
audience would -- of course -- expect to be treated to an eyeful (or to
as much of an eyeful as a family-oriented establishment would allow).
But what the audience would actually see from the front was a
phosphorescent skeleton inside glowing body with no flesh at all. It
would've been a terrific sight gag.

So how was this effect to be achieved? The body was to be made of
clear plastic resin. The back surface of the woman would have two
layers of pigment -- 'skin tone' with appropriate shadings when seen
from the rear, and dead black when seen from the front (through the
transparent torso). Therefore the body would disappear in the blackness
of the ride when she spun around to face the audience.
But buried in this life-size clear casting would be a
phosphorescent skeleton lit by black light (UV light). Some of the
phosphorence would be reflected by interior surfaces of the transparent
casting and would give the body a ghostly glow that would coruscate as
the body spun and the reflection angles changed.
It should've been a great sight gag, but......

Most plastics do absorb light (which is why many of them degrade in
sunlight), and this causes unpredictable color effects. It's more of a
case of absorption than of refraction.
In the woman's case, the resin absorbed almost 100% of the UV and
therefore the skeleton didn't glow. Nobody (myself included) had
considered this possibility. Afterwards, I mentally kicked myself and
said, "Dummy! Why do you think plastics are degraded by UV in the first
place? If the light passed straight through them, there'd be no damage
to the resin."

......wait a minute, there was a clarinet solo in the ride's theme
song, that's why this message is not off-topic!

Live and learn,
Bill

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org

   
     Copyright © Woodwind.Org, Inc. All Rights Reserved    Privacy Policy    Contact charette@woodwind.org