Slashdot Mirror
Writing on Standing Water
A reader writes "Engadget is reporting on Japanese scientists who have found a way to 'write' characters on the surface of water using waves. This looks very cool - but the time required to change character seems very high (15-30 seconds). From the article: 'Liquid-based displays are nothing new -- in a vertical orientation, at least -- but apparently it's a lot more difficult to coax a standing pool of water into forming recognizable shapes and characters.'"
"My name is written in water" has lost all it's meaning, now!
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
First post ;-)
Because it's COOL. Who needs practical application?
Not to rain on their parade, but these ice sculpture guys seem to have beat them to it.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
But it only works with Capital Os.
For example, writing a word in water and having the perimeter of the pool recognize the waves, and convert it to digital text. Microscopically, that could actually have a use with a liquid enclosed touchscreen.
Sigs are for Terrorists.
It's yet another way to go to an undeveloped country and convince the locals that you are a god.
Standing water, you say?
How about "Mosquito bite cream $20, on sale to your left"?
Nobody else has this sig.
"Interesting, but why would someone want or need to do this?"
You just answered your own question... see, right there, first word.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Over on engadget, they had serious comments about using resin, vacuuming forming, advertising, and other practical applications.
Here, we got a pageful of piss jokes....
"That's nothing new. I have a special pen that can write my name in my tiolet bowel water."
And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
using formulas known as Bessel functions to cut the processing time down to between 15 and 30 seconds and form characters
That sure makes it sound like the calculations involved are so great that the computer takes that long to process (as opposed to a physical delay in the hardware or medium). Certainly that could be reduced substantially either by optimization or throwing more CPUs at the problem. If that is indeed the issue then they could also precalculate the math for various shapes, and recall them instantly on demand. I also wonder if this is a purely virtual simulation inside the software, or if the system requires feedback from sensors in the real world to fine-tune the oscillations to produce the desired effect. In that case it may take that much time to stabilize the system because of chaos and the like. I have a hunch that must be what's going on, because certainly these people are smart enough and have enough funding so that processing speed alone isn't the issue.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Because we are fresh out of glass coke bottles.
i'm imagining a pool with a message that reads "wet surface"
shooting is not too good for my enemies
Someone needs to make it spell out "John Keats."
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
It seems they've reversed this process and solved for the axial data given the point-by-point data - e.g. the rasterized character.
By the way, CAT scans and Bessel functions are one of the examples of "abstract" math that later turns out to have practical application.