Magnetons and holograms

chitoryu12 · Post by **chitoryu12** » 2006-05-18 08:54pm

My friend Casey has an idea that I consider insane, but I think that some professionals should look at this (he is only 13, after all, and with very little common sense).

He thinks that you could use magnetons (never heard of them before) to pull electrons that create images on a TV into an empty space to create 3D holograms.

I myself think it's crazy and baseless, but what's your idea?

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2006-05-18 09:04pm

chitoryu12 wrote: I myself think it's crazy and baseless, but what's your idea?

You are correct. It is crazy. It is, in fact, too crazy for me to even begin to describe how wrong it is on every level. To do so would require me to explain, in terms a physics challenged 13 year old could grasp, how current display systems work and point out all the many ways that it would mean this idea would not work along the way.

In the meantime, get a big powerful magnet and hold it next to your friend's CRT TV. Which will be as good a practical example of why this is silly as any explanation ever could be. It will also kill his telly.

("Magnetons", by the way, are the theoretical particles that make up magnetic fields. We do not, as far as I know, have empirical evidence that they actually exist, but they make quantum mathematics nice and neat).

SpacedTeddyBear · Post by **SpacedTeddyBear** » 2006-05-19 12:00am

Those 3D-"holograms" that you see aren't technically holograms. They're volumetric displays.

Typically, holograms are emulsions ( mainly either from silver halidide, or di-cromated geletin) on a glass surface. What these emulsions do, is record interference patterns from a coherent light source ( a laser typically) called the reference wave, with that from the object wave from whatever you are trying to record. Unlike photographs which record only the intensity of light, holograms also record the phase difference of the image you are trying to produce due to the constructive and destructive intereference light.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-05-19 01:02am

Head over to HowStuffWorks and you'll see why this isn't a viable idea. Thing is, that's just now how a TV works, and secondly, pulling the electrons out wouldn't do anything. Electrons sitting in the air are invisible afterall--or else you'd see them all over the place!

Standard TVs use an interlacing technique when painting the screen. In this technique, the screen is painted 60 times per second but only half of the lines are painted per frame. The beam paints every other line as it moves down the screen -- for example, every odd-numbered line. Then, the next time it moves down the screen it paints the even-numbered lines, alternating back and forth between even-numbered and odd-numbered lines on each pass. The entire screen, in two passes, is painted 30 times every second.

Then there's also progressive, but that's not important. See, it's a big ol' beam gun that sprays electrons at the monitor surface. If you yanked them out all you'd be doing is yanking the chalk away from the chalkboard. No good! That's how you kill your TV, like Vendetta said.

A color TV screen differs from a black-and-white screen in three ways:
There are three electron beams that move simultaneously across the screen. They are named the red, green and blue beams.

The screen is not coated with a single sheet of phosphor as in a black-and-white TV. Instead, the screen is coated with red, green and blue phosphors arranged in dots or stripes. If you turn on your TV or computer monitor and look closely at the screen with a magnifying glass, you will be able to see the dots or stripes.

So when your TV needs to change stuff it'll zap those phosphors, changing the color density, and creating the picture. The need to have 3 different phosphors has a similar effect to the need, on film, to have seperate color crystals--it lowers resolution... but that's just some side info. Point is, if you yanked them away from the screen, there's no display. It's like shining a flashlight through a stained glass window, kinda.

When a color TV needs to create a red dot, it fires the red beam at the red phosphor. Similarly for green and blue dots. To create a white dot, red, green and blue beams are fired simultaneously -- the three colors mix together to create white. To create a black dot, all three beams are turned off as they scan past the dot. All other colors on a TV screen are combinations of red, green and blue.

So, see, again, you need that stuff to make your screen do stuff. Without the interaction between the phosphors and the electron beam you don't get anything happening at all! That's definately no good.

Also, about the Magnetons... look up the Graviton--originally we figured it was the carrier particle of the Strong Nuclear force, but it turned out it's not! More random info. Just tellin' him that if there IS a particle interaction that carries the force related to magnetic fields, it may not be as simple as we think.

Winston Blake · Post by **Winston Blake** » 2006-05-19 05:13am

chitoryu12 wrote:He thinks that you could use magnetons (never heard of them before) to pull electrons that create images on a TV into an empty space to create 3D holograms.

1. What definition of hologram is he using?
2. What definition of magneton is he using?

The only place i've ever heard of magnetons is as units physics stuff that's above my head. Maybe he was thinking of magnetic monopoles? Besides the fact that magnetic monopoles only exist in uber-advanced theoretical models and have never been detected, i have no idea how he thinks TVs work. We can probably assume that by hologram he means '3D displays like in Star Wars/Trek/etc'.

I can sort of interpret 'pull electrons that create images on a TV into an empty space' to mean making a volume of air somehow fluorescent and firing electron beams into it. Such electron beams would have to have enough energy to punch through the atmosphere (as opposed to the vacuum inside a TV tube), so they'd already be glowing and would drown out the light of any image. They'd also be forming current loops and arcing all over the place scorching stuff, since you're really talking about lightning-like high-energy charged particle beams.

If your friend's really interested in this sort of thing he should be reading a textbook instead of channeling Lt Cmdr Data.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2006-05-19 07:26am

He sounds like a little wanker who just learned a new word. This hypothesis is ridiculously easy to disprove. Just hold a magnet in front of your TV and see if there's any effect similar to what he describes.

chitoryu12 · Post by **chitoryu12** » 2006-05-19 08:03am

Thank god he hasn't done any of this crap yet. He always gets crazy ideas, and I only remember one time when his idea worked (sticking a Kinex piece between a sliding door and the wall when it got stuck after he locked it for no reason). He thinks he's smart, but he's not. He never bothers to prove any of his crap either.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-05-19 03:33pm

Covenant wrote:Head over to HowStuffWorks and you'll see why this isn't a viable idea. Thing is, that's just now how a TV works, and secondly, pulling the electrons out wouldn't do anything. Electrons sitting in the air are invisible afterall--or else you'd see them all over the place!

That, my friend, depends on how intense the electron source is. Lightning is merely electrons, yet I'm sure you'll not say it's invisible (or inaudible for that matter).

drachefly · Post by **drachefly** » 2006-05-19 04:34pm

A magneton isn't even a thing; it's just a discrete quantity of magnetic field. You might as well say "Well, get a bunch of meters and use them to pull the electrons out."

Dennis Toy · Post by **Dennis Toy** » 2006-05-20 12:35am

magneton, oh i though he said "Magnetron".

first his idea would never work for the sole purpose that it would take too much power just to keep the molecules from flying apart using this theoretical device.

Dennis Toy · Post by **Dennis Toy** » 2006-05-20 12:40am

let me get this straight,

he wants to create 3d holograms by pulling electrons from the TV Set? Why do it that way. Why not use an actual Holographic generator and not go through destroying a tv set to do this?

Dooey Jo · Post by **Dooey Jo** » 2006-05-20 06:45am

And I intend to create a magnetic containment field to hold the plasma from a plasma display. I shall extract the plasma with a hose. Little death rays will excite the atoms to create light of different colours. This will also create a hologram. By firing additional death rays into the walls of the room, real surround sound will be produced. How will I create these death rays? Shut up, you're disturbing my genius!

chitoryu12 · Post by **chitoryu12** » 2006-05-20 10:14am

He recently said that he would use a "Magnetron" instead. I don't know what difference this would make. You were right about the "wanker who learned a new word" thing, wolveraptor. He just assumed it's a "really strong magnet". We call really strong magnets "really strong magnets".

Dooey Jo · Post by **Dooey Jo** » 2006-05-20 10:31am

A magnetron is a sort of particle accelerator that generates coherent microwaves, and are commonly found in microwave ovens. So basically, he wants to microwave his TV to create holograms

chitoryu12 · Post by **chitoryu12** » 2006-05-20 10:38am

Dooey Jo wrote:A magnetron is a sort of particle accelerator that generates coherent microwaves, and are commonly found in microwave ovens. So basically, he wants to microwave his TV to create holograms

Jesus tap-dancin' Christ on a pogo stick! I'm taking all TVs from his house and locking them up! He's gonna kill himself one day, probably in an attempt to use gas lasers to make an anti-gravity drive.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2006-05-20 10:45am

Christ...invite to submit his brilliant ideas to the US Patent Office. Surely he'll make fortune with his fantastic inventions.

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2006-05-20 10:54am

Peoples, lay off. The kid's obviously a dumbshit, but he's young, and he shows an interest in science that might lead him to actual knowledge later on. He's only 13, after all.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2006-05-20 11:50am

You realize that by posting on this site, we're not actually saying anything to him? Besides, his interest in science appears to be coupled with a shitload of arrogance. He thinks he's a goddamn genius who figured out what professional researchers couldn't. At the very least, he ought not to present his ideas as fact, but rather as hypotheses waiting to be disproven. For example: "I wonder why people don't just use *insert technobable* to create holograms. There must be a reason."

drachefly · Post by **drachefly** » 2006-05-20 01:01pm

I remember having a hard time making that dissociation when I was 8. By 13, though, the 'engineering differs from daydreaming' meme should be pretty well ingrained.

chitoryu12 · Post by **chitoryu12** » 2006-05-20 01:22pm

wolveraptor wrote:You realize that by posting on this site, we're not actually saying anything to him? Besides, his interest in science appears to be coupled with a shitload of arrogance. He thinks he's a goddamn genius who figured out what professional researchers couldn't. At the very least, he ought not to present his ideas as fact, but rather as hypotheses waiting to be disproven. For example: "I wonder why people don't just use *insert technobable* to create holograms. There must be a reason."

Indeed, he does that often. Of course, he always tries to test out his ideas, sometimes creating more problems, and he never learns from his mistakes. That thing I mentioned earlier about the sliding door that got stuck, it was because he walked up to it and locked it just because he felt like it. Funny thing is, he did the exact same thing 30 seconds earlier, and it got stuck that time. Rather than figure out that locking the door will get it stuck, he does it again.

He also has a problem with admitting he's wrong. My mother and I were taking him to the movies, and we stopped for gas. He said that he loved the smell of plutonium. We drove four miles before we finally convinced him that he was talking about petroleum, and that cars are not powered by radioactive materials. When he realizes he's losing an arguement, he says "Whatever," and blows the whole thing off as ridiculous. And don't get me STARTED on the "reptilian alien claw outside the window" thing...

Dooey Jo · Post by **Dooey Jo** » 2006-05-20 01:46pm

Sounds like he has quite the imagination. If you can get him to study physics and engineering, he could one day put it to real use instead. If you don't, he'll probably become a real crackpot scientist one day

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2006-05-20 08:40pm

If the kid's sane, his general curiousity might be able to be put to some good, if his own arrogance can be overcome, but judging from some of the things you've said, the kid's got a really intense imagination... maybe a wee bit more intense than usual... if he's got some kind of condition... I dunno, I don't know anything about psychology or anything, but keep an eye on him, in case he goes nuts.

chitoryu12 · Post by **chitoryu12** » 2006-05-20 10:55pm

It's not a condition. His parents didn't let him leave the house except for school and didn't let him watch anything more intense than Barney and the Teletubbies until he was about 5. He may be a teenager, but his common sense is equivilant to someone of about 7.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2006-05-21 01:48pm

Ah, so it's just a problem of puerility.

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