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Dec 23, 2010

Pretty Soon, Your Gold Wedding Band Can Be Any Color You Want

Researchers have figured out how to use a specific engraving technique in order to alter the frequency of light a metal—any metal—absorbs or reflects. How? By carving tiny rings, smaller than the wavelengths of light.

Gold normally absorbs blue light, which gives it its yellowish hue. Silver metals absorb and emit just about every frequency of visible of light (which means they're actually colorless).

By carving a pattern of rings onto a metal's surface, the properties of its electrons, called the resonant frequency, is altered. By varying the size and depth of these rings, the frequency of light a metal absorbs and reflects is changed. No other properties of the metal are affected.

This is essentially the same technique that scientists are using to create invisibility cloaks, except that instead of trying to make light pass through a material, they just want to redirect how light is reflected and absorbed.

15 comments:

Nokel said...

awesome, I want a crimson red ring, that would be really sweet

World of Zero said...

This is cool!

Bargain Hunter said...

Invisibility cloaks? What where!?

Jeff said...

I want one that can disappear entirely.

Billy said...

this has the potential for some extremely hideous jewelry

G345t said...

Wow, that's pretty awesome. Now if only they could make one that didn't make your bank account disappear.

Teutorix said...

Color of gold is still the best if you ask me.

Unknown said...

im gonna take out all my teeth and put crimson red teeth

Les said...

It's pretty cool, but I can't see them using it all that much save for minor highlights. Because really, when you buy a gold piece you want people to know it's gold.

cooperlife said...

isn't the point of having a GOLD band so that you and others can see that it's the colour of GOLD? It would be silly to go "hey, look at my gold ring" and hold up a ring that's bright blue.

poorfags said...

I want my gold to remain golden, thanks. But that invisibility cloak thing might have promise.

Anonymous said...

i think the idea of having a gold band is uhm... it's gold?

SuciƓ Sanchez said...

I'm going to buy some invisible jewelry fro Xmas.

stm said...

just like in LoTR

Monster Madness said...

That's pretty awesome! :)