tonef
4th July 2012 - 10:39 AM
As I was sipping from my coffee cup one morning, watching tv, bleary eyed, I noticed that the rim of the cup seemed to distort what I was viewing in the background.
The effect seems more pronounced when I am not wearing glasses, and in my worse eye.
If you place an object close to your eye, but focus past it, you can see a slight shadow outline. Look through the outline and you should be able to see that whatever's in the background distorts slightly, sharpening and compressing.
Is this a gravitational effect, or an optical illusion?
As far as I know, everything with a mass exhibits a gravitational field. So I guess light is being warped around the object in relation to the position of the observer?
It's nothing major, but I've not been able to come up with a definitive answer, even with the combined power of bing-google, or google-bing.
Lasand
4th July 2012 - 02:13 PM
Lunarlanding
10th July 2012 - 02:52 AM
QUOTE (tonef+Jul 4 2012, 10:39 AM)
As I was sipping from my coffee cup one morning, watching tv, bleary eyed, I noticed that the rim of the cup seemed to distort what I was viewing in the background.
Simple edge diffraction, tonef; nothing to do with gravity.
see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife-edge_effectLunar
Guest_Tonef
11th July 2012 - 09:28 AM
The article explains the phenomenon as electromagnetic, but does not suggest why images sharpen within the shadow. What is the cause of this effect?
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