Related papers: Olmec mirrors: an example of archaeological Americ…
Archaeological mirrors from the Olmec civilization were analyzed in the context of bibliography produced in the last two decades. Photographs of its images are showed as a proof of its good quality. Some suggestions are made on its probable…
Archaeological American mirrors are common findings and the images obtained with them are often described by archaeologists as possessing high quality. However, photographs attesting this fact are rare, if any. To the best of my knowledge,…
What can relics of the past tell us about the thoughts and beliefs of the people who invented and used them? Recent collaborations at the frontier of archaeology, anthropology, and cognitive science are culminating in speculative but…
In the paper we will describe three instruments of particular historical and didactic interest belonging to the Historical Collection of Physics Instruments of Palermo University: a convex mirror most likely dating back to the early…
Concave mirrors are fundamental optical elements, yet some easily observed behaviors are rarely addressed in standard textbooks, such as the formation of multiple reflected images. Here we investigate self-imaging -- where the observer is…
In this expository paper, I survey Room frames and Kirkman frames, concentrating on the early history of these objects. I mainly look at the basic construction techniques, but I also provide some historical remarks and discussion. I also…
We give a sharp construction for twins in arbelos, based on polar reciprocity. In the process, new circles displaying arquimedean afinities came into scene.
We give a brief survey of some of the geometry of mirror symmetry, written in 2004 for the "Encyclopaedia of Mathematical Physics". Probably a little bit out of date now in a few places, but hey.
This is a review article on mirror symmetry and aspects of it related to the theory of modular forms. We describe this topic along its historical development and connect to some more recent results toward the end. The article is for…
We review recent progress in the field of optomechanics, where one studies the effects of radiation on mechanical motion. The paradigmatic example is an optical cavity with a movable mirror, where the radiation pressure can induce cooling,…
Development of optometry in western countries was studied on a viewpoint of the history of science. It was revealed that optometry had been formed on the basis of optics, a branch of physics, to which biomedical study was added. Optometry…
If an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to our own era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today? We summarize the likely geological fingerprint of the Anthropocene, and…
The mirror extensions for vertex operator algebras are studied. Two explicit examples which are not simple current extensions of some affine vertex operator algebras of type $A$ are given.
This talk was given at the Tunguska-2001 international conference but it is not about the Tunguska event. Instead we tried to give some flavor of mirror matter, which is predicted to exist if parity is an unbroken symmetry of nature, to…
Experimentation with obliquely incident light established that all four circular reflectances of a chiral sculptured thin film backed by a metallic mirror contain strong evidence of the circular Bragg phenomenon. When the mirror is removed,…
In this article we explore some finer properties of equi-areal mirrors and introduce techniques for developing new mirror surfaces that simultaneously minimize angular and areal distortion.
What if a clock could do more than tell time - what if it could look around? This project explores the conceptualization, design, and construction of a timepiece with visual perception capabilities, featuring three types of human-time…
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,…
Cultural astronomy reveals ways in which perception and culture have shaped the interpretation of the night sky.
Traditional Aboriginal Australian cultures include a significant astronomical component, perpetuated through oral tradition and ceremony. This knowledge has practical navigational and calendrical functions, and sometimes extends to a deep…