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Make Edible Fiber Optics
Bend light in your kitchen

1. Mix the gelatin with very hot water. Let it cool a bit ( be careful, the hot mixture can scald if spilled ) and pour it into the pan until it’s about 1/2 inch deep. Put it in the refrigerator to cool and set (about three hours). 2. Take the pan out of the refrigerator and use the aluminum foil to lift the set gelatin out of it. Peel off the aluminum foil and put the gelatin on a flat cutting board. 3. With a sharp knife, carefully cut a few straight strips of gelatin, about 1/2 inch wide and a few inches long. Use a spatula to lift them off the cutting board and place them on a counter. 4. Shine the penlight or laser pointer into one end of the gelatin strip. The light should come out the other end. (You can hold up a piece of white card to catch the light coming out.) Gently make shallow curves in the gelatin strip. When you shine the light into one end, it should glance off the sides of the gelatin strip and come out the other end. If you curve the strip too sharply, some of the light will escape, because it will strike the interior surface of the gelatin at too sharp an angle to be completely reflected. See how sharp you can make the curves before the light leaves the gelatin.

1. Mix the gelatin with very hot water. Let it cool a bit ( be careful, the hot mixture can scald if spilled ) and pour it into the pan until it’s about 1/2 inch deep. Put it in the refrigerator to cool and set (about three hours).

2. Take the pan out of the refrigerator and use the aluminum foil to lift the set gelatin out of it. Peel off the aluminum foil and put the gelatin on a flat cutting board.

3. With a sharp knife, carefully cut a few straight strips of gelatin, about 1/2 inch wide and a few inches long. Use a spatula to lift them off the cutting board and place them on a counter.

4. Shine the penlight or laser pointer into one end of the gelatin strip. The light should come out the other end. (You can hold up a piece of white card to catch the light coming out.) Gently make shallow curves in the gelatin strip. When you shine the light into one end, it should glance off the sides of the gelatin strip and come out the other end. If you curve the strip too sharply, some of the light will escape, because it will strike the interior surface of the gelatin at too sharp an angle to be completely reflected. See how sharp you can make the curves before the light leaves the gelatin.

Some Trivia...
Today’s telephone and computer networks depend on high-tech methods for speeding information from place to place. One of the fastest ways to transmit data is along fiber-optic cables, bundles of glassy strands that can carry pulses of light for long distances. The pulses represent information, expressed in a kind of high-tech code (a little like Morse code). Fiber-optic cables are expensive to buy and install, but they can relay much greater amounts of information far more quickly than traditional copper wires. The technology is generally very sophisticated, but you don’t actually need a lot of fancy equipment to try it out. You can make a kind of fiber optics in your own kitchen—and eat it when you’re through.

Fiber optics work because of the way beams of light act when they strike the interface between two different materials. When light traveling through a medium such as water or glass hits the surface where the material meets the air, some of the light is reflected back inside the material and some may travel out into the air. The amount that is reflected depends on the angle at which the light hits the surface. If the beam hits the surface at a steep angle (that is, if the beam is nearly perpendicular to the surface), a lot of the light escapes into the air. On the other hand, if the beam hits at a very shallow angle, so that it just skims the surface, all the light is reflected back into the material; none is lost into the air. So when you shine a light in one end of a thin strand of glass, the light will stay entirely within the strand, glancing off its sides. Even if you gently bend the strand so that it curves a bit, the glancing beam of light will follow the curves all the way from one end of the strand to the other. (If you bend it too much, however, some of the light will strike the surface of the strand at too sharp an angle and will exit the strand, so that the light is not fully transmitted.)

Fiber optics are used for more than communication. They are also helpful in medicine and surgery, where they can be used to illuminate and investigate small, out-of-the-way spaces. As long ago as the early 1900s dentists used bent rods of quartz to transport light to hard-to-reach spots. In today’s medicine, bundles of several thousand glass rods or strands can be used to transmit an entire image from inside the body. Surgeons use fiber-optic cables to look into the far reaches of the human body without having to make large cuts.

The path to modern fiber-optic technology began in the 1840s, when Swiss physicist Daniel Collodon and French physicist Jacques Babinet observed that light could be made to travel along streams of water. As the water curved in an arc, the light beams inside would bounce along the sides of the stream and follow the water’s path. This discovery made it possible to design ornamental fountains made of brightly lit jets of water. The techniques used to make those brilliant fountains have evolved into the fiber-optic cables that we now use. But you can go back to the roots of the technology. Because gelatin dessert is largely made up of water, it will also work as a fiber optic. Here’s how to try it out at home.

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	Other Sections: ---------------- H O M E Our Plan Our Policy Our Papers ---------------- Parenting Sister's Page Muslim Youth Children's Page Shahadah Da'wah Khalifah Asphorism Islamic Books Islamic News Multimedia Countries ---------------- Links Index Ask Scholar Search Engines Contact Us H O M E