r/oddlysatisfying • u/danielminds • 5d ago
Simulation of light passing through different lenses, mirrors, and prisms
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Credit: @thebrainmaze on TikTok
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u/UnbarredTable0 5d ago
A GRIN lens (short for Gradient Refractive Index lens) is an optical component that focuses or bends light by gradually changing the internal refractive index of the material itself, rather than relying on curved outer surfaces
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u/OlderRobloxian 3d ago
Could this be used in eyeglasses to minimize, or completely eliminate, distortion when looking off center of the lenses, especially in higher prescriptions? I am guessing that glasses lenses need to be too thin for it to work based on how long the block of material was in this simulation, but idk for sure.
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u/FlatButWet 5d ago
It just keeps on going… usually these videos last like 5 seconds… this is the BEST!
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u/FacetiousTomato 5d ago
This one would have been 10000x better if they didn't start tilting the camera around randomly for no reason at the end.
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u/mxzf 5d ago
That sort of thing makes me wonder if it's AI-generated, it's just a weird nonsensical thing that doesn't really make any sense compared to the rest of the video.
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u/IncredibleGonzo 5d ago
There is unnecessary movement throughout, it's just more subtle zooming in and out and shifting up and down up until the end (not just the obvious transitions between lenses, it doesn't stay put on each lens). Camera rarely if ever stops moving.
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u/LickingSmegma Mamaleek are king 5d ago
Yeah, I saw the little movements and knew right away that there's some stupid music too.
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u/IncredibleGonzo 5d ago
I didn't even bother unmuting!
It is quite a cool video overall, I enjoyed the visualisation! Just some weird choices that make it worse for no good reason.
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u/Paddy_Tanninger 5d ago
I don't think you can get AI shit to generate this length with this much consistency, and if you could, I doubt it would start doing camera moves at some point 2 minutes into it.
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u/bothering 5d ago
theyve started developing AIs that dont directly generate the image, rather they manipulate 3d assets so as to cover themselves up
all those 3d "what if the earth was hit by a gamma ray" tiktoks are part of that new type of ai
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u/jemidiah 5d ago
I'm 100% certain this was made with AI doing most of the work. Whether that means some raw video generation or creating a project in Blender or similar I can't say. There's no reason you'd do this manually nowadays.
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u/Clarkey7163 5d ago
dont think so, screams of blender render to me AI isnt good enough to do a shot like this in one take yet
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u/Upset_Ant2834 5d ago
Yes it is. Astra is capable of creating something like this in blender and rendering it, and in fact I'm fairly confident this was made by AI. It has a few repeating ones like "light pipe" whatever that is, and then optical fiber. the behavior of the light rays is also inconsistent with some being split into the spectrum and some only diffracting
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u/dydhaw 5d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_tube
Dispersion was purposely only demonstrated in the last few examples, it seems very consistent to me. An AI could have generated this video in Blender but to me it's indistinguishable from something a person would've made on their own
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u/Dipsey_Jipsey 5d ago
it's indistinguishable from something a person would've made on their own
That's kinda where we're at with a lot of things.
People that actually use AI rather than spend their days bitching or memeing about it are stumbling on the new features and capabilities of the models all the time. Some of the shit GPT6 Astra Ultra does... mindblowing in all honesty. And things like "too many fingers", or inconsistency in quality are largely things of past models.
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u/Upset_Ant2834 5d ago
I agree it's fairly indistinguishable from human work, I'm only confident because I've used Astra to make blender renders and there's a few subtle "mannerisms" in how it animates that I noticed
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u/Dadikoe 5d ago
What the hell is happening with that GRIN lens?
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u/Flammendehaar 5d ago
What the actual fuck are we doing with our lives?
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u/MallyOhMy 3d ago
Watching videos of light moving through different shapes through the biconvex lenses we have evolved to use for focusing light as shown in the video.
(Some people will have artificial biconvex lenses for this purpose)
Many people also use convex lenses affixed in front of their eyes to readjust the final focal point of the light.
I, unfortunately, am among the many with astigmatism, meaning that the shape of my corneas and/or lenses are not properly rounded, and thus do not focus light as nearly as any of the lenses in the video.
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u/karlexceed 5d ago
Why'd the camera work get wacky at the end?
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u/Upset_Ant2834 5d ago
Because it's made by AI. When planning camera keyframes in blender, it's shooting in the dark and sometimes makes weird transitions like that
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u/RincewindTVD 5d ago
I don't think a rendered clip needs to have camera shake and wobble, that was unpleasant for me to watch.
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u/IkonosaurusRex 5d ago
why are there so many different types of lenses and prisms if some do the same thing
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u/Jazzlike-Context-471 5d ago edited 5d ago
They only appear to do the same thing here but a lot of those lenses and telescopes will have differences in aberrations (spherical, chromatic, coma, astigmatism, etc).
Lens design is really about reducing those aberrations which cause things like color fringing, curved focus plane, stars looking like streaks or smudges rather than pinpoints.
Even high end camera lenses being designed and released currently with all their crazy complex optical design and multi layer optical coatings won't be perfect in terms of aberrations.
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u/TheArbiterOfOribos 5d ago
Lenses with a flat side are easier to mount (particularly against hard surfaces) but optical systems often want to remove flat surfaces entirely so it’s a design choice. For example I have a laser that is messed up by back reflections so there can be no flat surfaces on the incoming beam side. Even flat exit sides cause issues but less so we deal with it. But then I have a vacuum system where the window is flushed against metal so it needs a flat side to withstand the pressure. A curved surface would break upon depressurisation.
Prisms also sometimes flip the image (or not) but you might want the lowest possible amount of material. I use Calcium Fluoride as optical material at work and while extremely transparent from UV to IR, there are still transmission losses. I will tend to use whatever element does the job with the thinnest length.
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u/IhateshadyHVAC 5d ago
Any idea what causes this:
When I look at my bathroom window in the mirror at night it looks like yellow illuminated water is moving horizontally over the glass. Even when there are no cars. Always in the same northern direction. I show people videos and they freak out. Triple pane (Not to brag) with that foggy effect for privacy. It's always doing it. Sometimes it's faint and others it is HOLY SMOKES WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE LIGHT AT THIS WINDOW
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u/porn_sub_lurker 5d ago
Maybe it's some kind of pinhole effect through part of the window projecting what's on the outside, which I presume is a street with lights? And maybe you can only see it at the angle your mirror is facing? Obviously just guesses though. I had that through the curtains on my window one time and it was projecting the dark shadow of a car with two bright red taillights onto my ceiling. It looked crazy.
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u/Odin1806 5d ago
Why do the last 4 or 5 introduce other colors? Are there special properties that they break up the visible light or something?
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u/danielminds 5d ago
That’s chromatic dispersion and diffraction at work. Through the prisms and diamond, shorter wavelengths (blue/violet) bend more than red, splitting the white light into a rainbow. (Though diffraction gratings actually do the reverse—sending red out further than blue) Same reason you see rainbows through raindrops
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u/SEA_griffondeur 5d ago
Glass's chromatic refractive index is pretty constant so you don't see much chromatic aberrations so they simplified it for the glass lenses
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u/Ranttimeuk 5d ago
Dispersion prism:
Hello Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me Is there anyone at home?
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u/Un4442nate 5d ago
Wrong album, you'd know that if you had the Time and Money.
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u/SextupleRed 5d ago
Still have no idea why Fresnel lens are famous.
Looks the same as regular convex lens?
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u/geo_gan 5d ago
Thinner, lighter, and cheaper to focus light at same point (focal length) as equivalent regular convex lens. Why they were used in some VR headsets.
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u/abunchofcows 5d ago
This but their true grace is shown in lighthouses where a globe (bulb) of light can be focused into a beam thereby increasing the distance and intensity by combining many light particles together rather than keeping them dispersed
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u/abunchofcows 5d ago
Just to add they are the exact same as the convex lens, Fresnel just realized that the bulk of the lens makes no difference only the edges matter, so he took only the edges and put them into a single plane
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u/HeatherCDBustyOne 5d ago
This eventually led to an even more efficient design called a Zone plate.
Zone plate - WikipediaBecause of relying on diffraction instead of refraction, a Fresnel lens is much more efficient than a convex lens. A glass magnifying glass with a convex lens might be only 60% efficient (the glass absorbs 40% of the light's energy). A Fresnel lens made from acrylic can be as high as 98% efficient. This allows it to be used with much dimmer lights.
Fresnel lenses are commonly used as full sized sheets to magnify texts in books. They are lightweight, inexpensive, and efficient. The only drawback is that Fresnel lenses cause a slight distortion in the resulting image. That may cause a headache if you use them for very extended periods of time.
They are also commonly available as lightweight magnifiers and fire starters for survival gear because they are so efficient at magnifying light.
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u/REpassword 5d ago
Used for light houses. Instead of a big thick lens, it can be much smaller and lighter.
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u/karlexceed 5d ago
But it doesn't need to be as thick to achieve the same result.
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u/Iron_Nightingale 5d ago edited 5d ago
A really big glass lens is heavy. Difficult to carry up ten stories and install in a lighthouse.
What they figured out is, all of the light-bending properties of the lens happen at the surface—the interior of the lens doesn’t affect much. For our purposes, it’s just useless weight.
So a Fresnel lens gets rid of the heavy, useless interior of the lens and is, in effect, all surface. The result is a large and lightweight lens.
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u/Attainted 5d ago edited 5d ago
How did you manage to add a backslash to break the linking of a simple ctrl+c ctrl+v? lmao
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u/Weddedtoreddit2 5d ago
That just happens on reddit sometimes. He didn't mess it up. I've seen it plenty. No idea why it happens.
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u/Iron_Nightingale 5d ago
God damn it, Reddit app is shit. It automatically sneaks in backslash characters in front of formatting characters like *, _, and >. Quote formatting is impossible in the app now.
I checked it on the mobile website and it looked fine, but the backslash did in fact show up in the edit screen. Fixed now.
Thanks.
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u/IForgotMyPants 5d ago
It's really nice early in act one as it gives lesser chosen cards more utility because of the extra block. Especially nice in the underdocks since you really want good defense there. (this has been a joke for the slay the spire heads in chat)
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u/polar_nopposite 5d ago
If you look up a diagram of one you'd see why.
Also, if you looked closely at the flashlight on the back of your phone, you'd probably see one.
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u/apapadias 5d ago
But why didn’t Pink Floyd play on the last one? Totally missed opportunity there!
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u/FilmSubstrate 5d ago
There are some irregularities and mistakes. Fresnel Lens for example works the exact opposite of what is presented.
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u/abunchofcows 5d ago
Nope, fresnel lens is correct. Your thinking of the orientation in a lighthouse then it’s reversed
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u/LBGW_experiment 5d ago
Yeah, the demonstration of the fresnel lens does it dirty by not showing how it takes radially displayed light (say from a single source) and aligns the beams into a straight path, which is such a cool concept
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u/zweebna 5d ago
Any lens can do that in the reverse configuration. The fresnel lens just lets you make really big lenses without using tons of glass.
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u/LBGW_experiment 5d ago
Good point, didn't really think of that 😅 just a bunch of angled individual lenses instead of one big curved lens
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u/SEA_griffondeur 5d ago
A fresnel lens works exactly the same as standard lens, they don't have special optical properties
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u/Pure_Cycle2718 5d ago
You also put the parallel incident light on the curved surface of a plano-convex lens.
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u/cavalierpos 5d ago
Look at these nerds trying to reduce aberrations and shit
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u/McCheesing 5d ago
I once traded half my max HP to the council of ghosts for 5 aberrations … or is it apparitions. It’s late
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u/polar_nopposite 5d ago
Fresnel lens is correct. It's just more typical for it to be used for collimation than focusing. But as any lens, its effect is also reversible.
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u/DaYmAn6942069 5d ago
Hmm gonna guess all vehicles have a convex front windshield or similar judging by the way everyone’s headlights seem to have the intensity of the sun focused perfectly into the center of my retina
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u/dimechimes 5d ago
Can't sit through that terrible audio
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u/Actinidium 5d ago
Way too many of these have errors or don't show the correct purpose of a given optic for this video to be informative. It's more just to stare at pretty lines.
One improvement would be to use a polychromatic (white light) source to show how each element does a better or worse job with chromatic aberration.
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u/Alarmed-Direction500 5d ago
What is going on with that GRIN lense??
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u/SamStringTheory 5d ago
GRIN is an acronym for GRadient-Index lens, which means that the material property (specifically, the index of refraction) changes smoothly throughout the lens. Whereas normal lenses are a single, uniform material, and rely on the curvature of the boundaries to bend the light, GRIN lenses rely on the change in material property throughout the lens to bend the light. You can tailor the material property to get some really cool effects that you wouldn't normally be able to get otherwise.
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u/Beaticalle 5d ago
I'm unreasonably mad that they didn't show light going through plano-convex and plano-concave lenses the other direction.
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u/Punk_Says_Fuck_You 5d ago
The fiber is cool. This is why you can different wavelengths in a single strand. This is how you can have a direct pipe without ever being routed through public servers.
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u/ol-gormsby 5d ago
I'd like to see a close-up of the action in a quarter wave r3tardation plate.
Sorry for the mis-spell but the filters don't care about context.
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u/Fra23 18h ago
In my workplace, we just refer to them as (Quarter-) Waveplates, so that should keep you safe from the censors. Visualizing their effect would require visualizing the polarization sum of the beam (since they work through birefringence) but I do agree that polarizing optics are super cool and also deserve visualizations like these!
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u/ol-gormsby 18h ago
"(Quarter-) Waveplates"
Thanks for the tip! I've been fascinated by polarised light and filtration in general ever since studying photography.
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u/Mekelaxo 5d ago edited 5d ago
Reminds me of a playstore app called Light Ignite Lazer Puzzle
Edit: I remember playing the game years ago and I thought it was cool, but now it's just full of pop up ads
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u/Odd-Variation-299 5d ago
Just a question: isn't the mirror meant to reflect only after the light goes through the glass layer and hits the back side of it? "Normal mirror" got me, because I think for 80% of the folks, that is what a mirror looks like.
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u/tessartyp 5d ago
Household mirrors have the reflective surface behind the glass, but it's not a must. In many optics applications you want special mirrors with a reflective surface at the front since beam location and shape are critical and you don't want the distortion and loss of another pass through glass.
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u/Odd-Variation-299 5d ago
I agree, I understand why it is required in science. My profession is science-based, which is why I mentioned the "normal mirror" tag in the video... You jnow what, never mind. The majority of people will not even notice or make a fush out of it. Just "dumb" itiots like us, which are into science. 🤣
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u/Mookie_Merkk 5d ago
What about rear view mirrors?
Like how can I look through my mirror, see stuff, but then I flip it up to night mode... And I can still see stuff?? But darker????
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u/Shallnazar 5d ago
Part way through I was like "Damn there's a lot of different examples here.." then happened to scroll down and realize I was just barely getting to the halfway point lol. Very cool though, definitely had me glued to it the whole time.
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u/UltimateMygoochness 5d ago
Would love to have seen a reflecting telescope, I know the answer is it’s “out of focus”, but I still don’t get how the secondary mirror doesn’t block part of the image
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u/Fra23 18h ago
I can explain this one!
So, short answer: The mirror DOES block part of the image, but the "hole" is scattered all across the image, rather than being in one spot.
Long answer: A telescope is designed to view absolutely huge things that are insanely far away. The light that comes from, say, the moon, is almost parallel when it hits our eyes. Our eyes contain lenses, and lenses have the property that they swap the behaviour of positions and angles(directions) in the two focal planes (the one in front of the lens, i.e. the object we are looking at, and the one behind the lens, which would be on our retina). Light that is parallel in the first focal plane (F1) is distributed over many positions, but has one common angle. In the second focal plane (F2), this changes roles: The light is focussed onto a single point (it shares one common position), but it is now one focussed bundle, expanding in a cone of many directions.
The reason telescopes dont get blocked by the inner mirror can now be explained in two ways:
A: You can explain it by saying that telescopes are angle-magnifiers. Light from the moon is too parallel for us to see properly, so the telescope magnifies the angle to make it appear bigger. But the mirror of the telescope casts a shadow across an already-large range of angles (The mirror looks much bigger than the moon when you look at it from up close). So what happens? The shadow of the mirror is angle-magnified to absolutely ridiculously huge size, far, far bigger than the image of the moon. But if the shadow is so much bigger, then it also becomes more "dilluted", so it fades. The image you see is dimmed a little, but it does not have a visible hole anymore.
B: The concave mirror of a reflective telescope operates just like a lens, which means it has two focal planes. One is far, far away (at infinity), the other is right behind the internal mirror. But if the internal mirror is (almost) inside the focal plane of the concave mirror, then that means that position and direction/angle of its shadow (the blocked light rays) swap roles relative to the planets we are actually looking at: What started out as a small mirror that covers a large range of angles now becomes a set of near-parallel rays spread out across a large distance. And if the rays of the mirror's shadow hit our retina parallel instead of focussed, then our eyes cannot see the mirror anymore. It is "blurred out of existance"
Fun fact: the shape of the mirrors DOES impact the image a little more than "just dimming it", which is most apparent when your telescope takes a picture of very bright pinpoint stars. Search up "James Web Telescope Images" and notice what all the images have in common: Bright stars are six-pointed. This is the shape of the mirrors (they are hexagons) causing diffraction, and thus modifying the shape of every individual point you see. The mirror in a simple reflecting telescope would cause tiny stars to appear larger and more blurry, possibly even with faint rings around them.
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u/Fantastic_Habit_2948 4d ago
This was a cool video it makes me ask the question on the dove mirror when the light goes in it bounces comes back and bounces around in there a couple times before it comes out the other side after it bounces off the first surface would you be able to still be able to get the same data if it was carrying information at that point then it was before it came into the object.
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u/Fantastic_Habit_2948 4d ago
This is a video they should show it every school in the science class because this would definitely have kids asking questions especially the fact that when you tell them that that's how they transfer data now a days is through a fiber optic light it's amazing.
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u/BunkerSquirre1 5d ago
The Negative meniscus lens is some black magic fuckery and I hate its smug fucking divergent output
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u/Schmaptain 5d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/8kdLHlYG2qYDe