The 'Chromatic Abstractoscope

An Application of Polarized Light

Bibliographic Data

ID10275071
AuthorsCarlos Martinoya, Nahum Joël
Year1968
Volume1
Issue2
Pages171
Publication date1968-04-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLeonardo (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0024-094X • E-ISSN: 1530-9282
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1571956
OpenAlexW2327433942
LanguageEN
Citations received9

Both of us are physicists at the University of Chile where we developed an interest in devices capable of producing results with physical phenomena comparable to the works of abstract painters. This interest led to a rather exciting experience which we would like to communicate in this note: An open air exhibition of the visual arts (Feria de Artes Plasticas) was held in Santiago, in a park along the river Mapocho, in December 1960. This annual exhibition is an important event in Santiago, and, as scientists with an interest in the fine arts, we decided that it would be a good occasion for showing to the public some form of expression that might constitute a bridge between science and art. We thought that the colours obtained through the interference of polarized light by birefringent crystals would provide a good example. In polarized light the transverse vibrations are restricted to certain special directions; for instance, in plane polarized light they are all in one plane. A polarizing material, such as Polaroid sheet, has the property of transmitting only those transverse light vibrations that are vibrating in a certain plane. A birefringent material splits a wave of light into two waves that propagate through the material with different velocities, thus giving rise to interference effects which when polarized light is used produce colours. Both of us had on many occasions demonstrated this well-known effect to our students of physics and crystallography; their reaction made us think the general public might also enjoy seeing it. When discussing the programme and technical details of our 'show', we decided that in addition to demonstrating experiments of crystal growth by means of polarized light, we would also replace the crystals with colourless cellophane sheet (another birefringent material). When pieces of cellophane that have been folded and crushed into various

Art · Birefringence · Event (particle physics) · Exhibition · Geometry · Optics · Physics · Plane (geometry) · The arts · Transverse plane · Visual arts · Cephalopods and Marine Biology · Engineering · Mathematics · Spacecraft Design and Technology

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