I’m trying to find an item for a project. What is it called?
This device/material/design spreads light via triangle or tetrahedral lattice to reflect light internally before it around until it exits the opposite side. I believe the material can be anything transparent from glass to acrylic. The technology is used in bicycle reflectors, car headlights, and possible reflective gear.
Thanks,
^_^
Sorry, but I’m not quite sure what your question is.
Thus to me it appears to touch on several different optical principles.
For the application you cite where the light has to be transmitted through the material, as in car headlights, the design concern is beam shaping which is controlled in part by the lens in front. The optical principles used there are both Fresnel and prism optics. Since you ruled out the prism aspect, the term you may be looking for is ‘Fresnel’.
For systems that depend only on reflected light such as bicycle reflectors and reflective clothing patches, the term you may be looking for is ‘retro-reflector’ or ‘total internal reflection’.
These are systems that rely upon geometry such as corner cube reflectors or glass-beads with total internal reflection to bounce the light back 180 degrees.
Hope this is of some assistance. Gregg
Well into the 18th century, astronomers mainly used long refracting telescopes, designed around a meticulously shaped glass lens. However, other telescope designs offered a way to avoid some of the defects that could not be avoided in refractor lenses. In 1668, Isaac Newton devised a reflecting telescope. Instead of a lens, it used a single curved main mirror, together with a smaller flat mirror. In the next century, huge instruments descended from Newton’s design turned out to be especially useful for studying very faint objects, such as the dim patches of light known as nebulae. The studies that the new and bigger tools made possible led to fundamental changes in our understanding of the universe.
This quote appears after first diagram on page (scroll down). It lists a few types of reflected light but I chose this b/c of geometry shape.
"Reflector Geometry and Shape
The geometry and shape of the reflector plays an important role in both light intensity and light distribution. It determines how the focus of a shape is created with regard to the rays of light bouncing off the surface. Some commonly used shapes are parabolic, elliptical, spherical, etc.
Parabolic reflectors are shaped like a section of a parabola and have one focal point. When the lamp is placed at this focus, the rays of light reflect in a parallel fashion. These types of reflectors are found in the back of regular floodlights, for example car headlights or the kind used to typically light a driveway. For aquarium applications the typical reflectors sold as parabolic reflectors are not completely enclosed parabolic reflectors, but primarily a 2-D swept section of a parabola approximated by bending sheet metal into planar segments. The Spiderlight and the two PFO reflectors are examples of parabolic reflectors. To create a 3-D shape, a faceted construction is used to create a closed parabolic shape in 3-D, e.g. Diamond Light’s Luminarc III reflector."
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