Orchids: a natural complimentary color transition?

For our color-wheel assignment, I keep wondering if an example in nature of two complimentary colors than transition into each other with no grey could be something as simple as an orchid.

Looking through multiple pictures of orchids and their color transitions from purple to green, I never once saw grey within them..but almost a deep reddish brown, and in some a yellow tinge.

You wouldn't think these two colors could fade into each other, but looking at them in nature, although they look as if they have a clean cut separation, if you look closely you can see the small area where they intersect, and blend into one another.

In the picture on the left, there is still green in the center petals, although much less that the outer ones, you can still see it, and it hold much more of a yellow tinge.

And in the one on the right, you can see the colors meld into a warm, reddish brown color before becoming more distinct and separating into purple and green. Once again there is no grey. I believe this is an accurate example of a natural color transition with no grey, and I think I will be using it for my project.

Ghost Adventures feature new video camera with ability to see UV light

I was watching Ghost Adventures, the hilarious ghost hunting show on travel Channel that hads been referred to as "The Adventures of Shaggy and Scooby Douche". Anyway it's hysterical, but they're always trying out new equipment, and recently one camera they used caught my eye, and I've been meaning to blog about it...

I'm having trouble finding out what the camera is called exactly, but I remember from the episode that it had just been developed, and they had an interview with the inventor, and supposedly the camera is able to see, and display for human eyes, the otherwise "invisible" parts of the light spectrum. In this context, it allows for paranormal investigators to catch more evidence of the paranormal, that may have previously been invisible.

A Full -Spectrum DVR allows you to record in a natural setting without IR light contamination.

This is one of the cameras they use, it looks similar to this, but they will probably be using the newer one in upcoming episodes, so i will update this as soon as as I can find out what exactly the camera is called.

Alice- The Syfy miniseries

I was watching this miniseries earlier, and it made me remember not only how much I liked it, but how awesome the lighting and modeling is in the series. At some points the modeling is a bit cheesy

(when they're riding the flamingos) otherwise the landscapes (such as the white knight headquarters) are beautiful.

Also just the modern ta

ke on the story is really cool.

As the movie progresses, the sets become more and more elaborate with intense lighting, ranging from entirely fluorescant and synthetic,

to what appears to be completely natural light.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find any of the images of the modeled cities themselves. If I do I will add an extra blog to showcase them, but I highly recommend the miniseries.

Both in lighting and sets it is very artistic.

Set-wise, it almost reminds me of Matthew Barney's "The Cremaster Cycle" which is a (somewhat) well known, high budget art film.

What makes glass transparent?

Another really interesting and mind-bending question we discussed, is Why is glass transparent?

I know that glass is sand, and when mixed with extreme heat, such as lightening, glass can be produced (and through this way of making glass you receive really cool shapes)...

However what makes it transparent?

Things such as paper reflect light, and absorb it, so does glass simply...? I don't even know....

Image: http://madebymeg.net/blog/sea-glass-made-from-lightning/

What I found was really cool, it turns out that glass is transparent partially because it does not absorb visible light rays. However, I discovered that if light is high energy like deep-ultraviolet, then it CAN be absorbed by glass, making the glass seem opaque, and not transparent to high energy rays.

So the visual light spectrum cannot penetrate the glass, and therefore it appears "transparent" to human eyes.

"Glass is almost perfectly opaque to deep ultraviolet, which is why it's hard to get a tan through a window," emails physicist Louis A. Bloomfield of the University of Virginia. "By deep ultraviolet, I mean UVB and UVC."

"Pure glass cannot absorb visible light. Light merely slows (as glass molecules decide what energy contained in visible light, if any, matches an energy level of an atom in the glass molecules). In fact, the speed of light through glass is 66% of its speed through a vacuum."

"Visible light from the Sun is made of light waves with many colors (which we see displayed in a rainbow, for example). Each color has a particular frequency and that frequency has an energy level proportional to that frequency, says Bloomfield.

What has to match is an electron's and a color's energy levels. If any of the energy levels of the light matches any of the energy levels of the electron, the electron absorbs that energy and the glass heats up.

But It turns out that none of glass electron energy levels match any of the energy levels in the colors of visible light. So light passes through glass. Thus, sun-illuminated pure glass doesn't get hot while the opaque frame around it does." http://www.happynews.com/news/1262010/glass-transparency.htm

This makes sense, because although windows on a car get warm-ish (most likely not being pure glass) they remain much cooler than all the other areas of the car.... I'm starting to understand the idea. So because the energy levels of the atoms in the class, do not match up with the energy levels each color has, it cannot absorb it... but the higher energy colors, that are invisible to the human eye do match.

So technically like color, the transparency of glass is all in our mind, because if we were able to see the UV spectrum it would be opaque like other solids..... Which is a little trippy, because one day if there is a mutation in human genetics and someone is able to see UV spectrum light, then all glass will be opaque, making life as we know it extremely difficult...

What is a black light exactly?

I've always wondered what a black light really is, but until class yesterday, I never really thought about researching them. I remember watching "Room Raiders" on MTV in Middle school and high school, and them using black lights to detect "unseen stains" and then at concerts and performances, they were always a hit, because they made everyone glow... but I never knew what exactly they were.

It's called a black light due to the fact that it releases very little light that the human eye can see. So it's wavelengths start at the far end of the high-energy visible light range (HEV).

I learned that we see these wavelengths as deep blues and violets, and then the wavelength become so short and scattered that the human eye can no longer perceive them. This is when they become ultra-violet radiation.

It turns out too, that the black light is very similar to the colored lights we were using in class, in that it's a fluorescent light tube, with paint on the inside, restricting the light from shining out.

I also figured out, that based on the different wavelengths of the blacklight, they are used for different purposes, before I thought the blacklights used in concerts, and on "Room Raiders" were all the same light, with the same wavelength and frequency. However thy are not, as demonstrated by this chart....

Though all black lights emit UV rays, they can be used for different purposes depending on their wavelengths within the UV range. Wavelengths are measured in nanometers (one billionth of a meter), with the UV spectrum generally falling between 100 and 380 nanometers (nm). This spectrum is divided into three categories:

UV-A	380nm - 315nm	Long Wave (black lights, concerts, entertainment)
UV-B	314nm - 280nm	Medium Wave (forensic applications)
UV-C	279nm - 200nm	Short Wave (germicidal, sterilization)

From: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-black-light.htm

There are also tattoos now, which use ink that glows fluorescently under the light of a black light, but are very light and/or near impossible to see otherwise....

I think that's quite cool... but at the same time, I wonder what the chemical properties are of the ink...

Toy Story 3 V.S. other 3D films

Toy Story 3 is extremely visually impressive to me more than he other current 3D movies because of the way it is used.

Unlike movies such as the new "Alice in Wonderland", Toy Story 3 didn't use the 3D technology to simply show off the abilities of the filmmakers, but to improve the look of the film itself. In Alice in Wonderland, a random butterfly with no connection to the plot would occasionally fly through the center of a scene, distracting the audience and holding no value in the plot whatsoever. Honestly I thought this was a distracting waste of animator time.

In Toy Story 3, instead of using the 3D technology for random "pop-out" moments, it is used to add depth to the scenes.

Standing in the preschool playroom, the depth of the scene was amazing, and I remember clearly thinking in the theatre, "Now this is how 3D technology should be used". It didn't distract from the plot, if anything it made it more visually stimulating to focus on the movie in front of you, and not the other people in the theatre.