Entry Twenty-Nine:The Final Countdown

This is the last physics blog of the year for me, folks. I'd like to thank all of my fans, the people that have been following my blog faithfully since its inception, and most of all, Doc, for inspiring every single one of these posts. This blog will die with this final post, but I must tell you that it has been a blast sharing the physics in my life with all of you.



cool

Here it goes: The other day, I watched The Shining with my friends. The movie was on a DVD, or a Digital Video Disc, and it looked shiny. This is because a DVD is made of layers of plastic that contain tiny bumps and a groove track, kind of like a vinyl record. Anyways, these bumps make an uneven surface on the disc, so that when a light ray hits the surface, it is refracted into different wavelengths, so that there is a rainbow appearance on the DVD. Also, the light reflects off of the surface of the disc in different phases, so destructive interference of the white light results in only certain colors appearing to the human eye. This is similar to the phenomenon of thin film interference, where light both reflects off of the surface of a film (like soap), and also is refracted and reflects off of the bottom of the film.

Thank you Doc! You are the best!