Brenton Coon
Jamie Vilos
Info Lit
14 May 2014
METAMATERIALS
THE “WAVE” OF THE FUTURE
For decades film makers and science fiction authors have toyed with the idea of what technology will look like in the future. Be that tractor beams, space ships, holodecks, transporters and so on. Because of the amazing creativity of minds from the past we benefit from their ideas now in the present. Technologies such as cell phones, blue tooth, head’s up displays, touch screens and even sliding glass doors are all inspired by the future foreseen in science fiction. Once again science fiction has inspired science fact in a concept that could revolutionize the way people see and react to the world around them. Inspired by the idea of a cloaking device or invisibility, scientists have achieved the, once thought impossible, task of making an object appear to vanish into thin air using what is now called metamaterials.
Metamaterials are manmade objects that are composed of two or more specifically arranged and distinct materials (Rowe.). They can be 3d printed in sheets, applied directly to a surface, or even be produced using a special method to silk. These metamaterials have the power to manipulate electromagnetic radiation including sound waves, light waves, and ocean waves. Most all materials have a refractive index which dictates how waves would pass through or bounce off of them. For example, a pencil placed in a glass of water will look bent due to the natural refractive index of the water. However, if the water had a negative refractive index then the pencil would appear to bend back onto itself. Metamaterials allow objects to maintain a negative refractive index which bends the waves in ways other materials cannot.
There are many ap...
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Works Cited
Bourzac, Katherine. "A Practical Way to Make Invisibility Cloaks." MIT Technology Rview. N.p., 11 June 2011. Web. 12 May. 2014. .
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"How to Make an Object Invisible." MIT Technology Rview. Ed. Duncan Graham-Rowe. N.p., 11 Apr. 2007. Web. 12 May. 2014. .
McKeegan, Noel. "Flexible metamaterials the key to a working invisibility cloak?." GIZMAG. N.p., 11 Apr. 2007. Web. 12 May. 2014. .
Works Cited
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Rahman, Anatol. "New Material Can Make Ultra-light And Better Bulletproof Armor." The Tech Journal RSS. 13 Nov. 2012. Web. 10 May 2014.
Wise, P. M. (2005). Cotton mathers's wonders of the invisible world: An authoritative edition. (dissertation, Georgia State University)Retrieved fromhttp://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=english_diss
Miller, Derek D. Brave New World and the Threat of Technological Growth. 2011. 7 November 2013 .
...designed to simulate the effect of radar waves on different surfaces (CentannialOfFlight.gov). this was a marked advancement in stealth technology, because for the first time scientists realized that utilizing faceted surfaces, they could scatter almost all radar waves the hit an object away from the source thus making the said object invisible to radar detection, or nearly so. In 1977, this discovery was utilized in a new airframe for the F-117 Nighthawk. This new plane was designed entirely to avoid enemy electronic detection. With a revolutionary faceted design coated with RAM, or radar absorbent materials, the new plane was near-invisible to radar detection, and a new type of exhaust system lessened the heat trail coming from the plane’s engines, making for the first time an aircraft with a minimal infrared signature in addition to its minimal radar signature.
... incredible ideas, who knows, you might not even be around to read this paper. The statistics speak for themselves, these creations have and continue to save literally millions of lives every year. Besides for saving lives, we can only imagine how the world would be without some of these incredible contributions.
O'Meally, Robert, ed. New Essays on Invisible Man. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
The ANU invention uses a new nanomaterial to create the 3D projections. Millions of tiny silicon pillars, each up to 500 times thinner than a human hair, act as pixel projectors to create the light-based 3D images, said co-lead researcher Sergey Kruk, a professor at the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.
Miller, Derek. “Brave New World and the Threat of Technological Growth.” Student Pulse: The International Student Journal 3.4 (2011): no pag. Web.
Shmoop Editorial Team. “Ralph Ellison: Writing Invisible Man.” Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 26 Jan 2014.
Also created recently, a machine is also now helping those who are blind to be able to feel figures for math and science, created very recently, called a braille tablet. "Unlike existing braille displays, which use plastic pins pushed up and down from a motor, the device uses liquid or air to fill bubbles which 'pop up' and create the patterns of raised dots that braille is made up of. This technique frees up space, meaning displays can be tablet-size -- and therefore
"Microwaves, also known as Super High Frequency (SHF) signals, have wavelengths approximately in the range of 30 cm (1 GHz) to 1 mm (300 GHz)."
Nonlinear effects were first discovered and exploited technologically in fields other than optics: in electronics, nonlinear phenomena (e.g., modulation, rectification, inversion, harmonic generation, and heterodyning) are essential properties of practical devices; in acoustics, intermodulation distortion is the consequence of frequency mixing by a nonlinear characteristic of the speaker, amplifier or pickup. Some can found in the microwave region and radio frequency or in dielectric or magnetic
Nanophotonics is the study of the effects of light at the nano-scale. This course on nanophotonics coupled with my previous courses on nanoscale circuit fabrication has taught me a great deal about the nano-scale and nano-electronics. Described in this paper are the uses of several nanophotonic principles which allow us to make and measure in scales never before possible. The first topic, plasmonics, is a physical phenomenon that allows us to measure small changes in thicknesses and also to see well below the diffraction limiting optical restrictions. The implications of this technology are incredible in the fields of biomedical science, nanoengineering, and microscopy. The second topic of this paper, Microscopy, covers two methods of advanced microscopy that allow us to see much smaller than the optical limits allow.
Schultz, James. "Force Fields and 'Plasma' Shields Get Closer to Reality." Technology 25 July 2000: 20 pars. Web. 25 Oct. 2010. .