Related papers: Virtual images and billiards
Students of visualization come to formal education with an abundance of personal experience. However, one's exposure to graphics through media and education may not be sufficiently diverse to appreciate the nuance and complexity required to…
Retroreflectors are optical devices that reverse the direction of incident beams of light. Here we present a collection of billiard type retroreflectors consisting of four objects; three of them are asymptotically perfect retroreflectors,…
This is a short note to announce the availability of some movies that may be useful in classroom discussions on the photographic appearance of objects moving at relativistic speeds. The images are based on special relativity with no account…
Much recent interest has focused on "open" dynamical systems, in which a classical map or flow is considered only until the trajectory reaches a "hole", at which the dynamics is no longer considered. Here we consider questions pertaining to…
Recovering the 3D shape of transparent objects using a small number of unconstrained natural images is an ill-posed problem. Complex light paths induced by refraction and reflection have prevented both traditional and deep multiview stereo…
We present numerical simulations of magnetic billiards inside a convex domain in the plane.
Imposing start from the beginning that the incidence and the reflection of a ray t on an arbitrarily orientated mirror take place at the same point in space and at the same zero time in all involved reference frames in relative motion, we…
Three-dimensional reconstruction of events recorded on images has been a common challenge between computer vision and computer graphics for a long time. Estimating the real position of objects and surfaces using vision as an input is no…
True video understanding requires making sense of non-lambertian scenes where the color of light arriving at the camera sensor encodes information about not just the last object it collided with, but about multiple mediums -- colored…
We introduce the class of piecewise convex transformations, and study their complexity. We apply the results to the complexity of polygonal billiards on surfaces of constant curvature.
Commercial video games are increasingly using sophisticated physics simulations to create a more immersive experience for players. This also makes them a powerful tool for engaging students in learning physics. We provide some examples to…
We study the thermal rectification phenomenon in ``billiard'' systems with interacting particles. This interaction induces a local dynamical response of the billiard to an external thermodynamic gradient. To explain this dynamical effect we…
The Illumination Problem may be phrased as the problem of covering a convex body in Euclidean $n$-space by a minimum number of translates of its interior. By a probabilistic argument, we show that, arbitrarily close to the Euclidean ball,…
Throughout all years of study, students of physics are confronted with the question 'what exactly is light?' - a question that is impossible to answer correctly and, therefore, continuously discussed within the framework of models. Numerous…
Light Polarization has many technological applications and its discovery was crucial to reveal the transverse nature of the electromagnetic waves. However, despite its fundamental and practical importance, in high school this property of…
This paper studies billiard models with a generalized law of reflection, the so-called projective billiards. They unify various laws, including the classical one in a Euclidean, pseudo-Euclidean or Riemannian metric. They were introduced…
Understanding reflection remains a long-standing challenge in 3D reconstruction due to the entanglement of appearance and geometry under view-dependent reflections. In this work, we present the Pygmalion Effect in Vision, a novel framework…
The problem of the reflectance of a photon by a metallic mirror whose position is treated quantum mechanically is considered. The interaction between the metallic surface and the light is treated classically. It is shown that the…
A method for displaying volumetric images, which exploits our binocular vision and does not require eyewear, is discussed. The display can be rendered as a matrix of pivoting micromirrors irradiated by a light beam; each micromirror focuses…
We explore the problem of computationally generating special `prime' images that produce optical illusions when physically arranged and viewed in a certain way. First, we propose a formal definition for this problem. Next, we introduce…