:bugeye: anyone ever notice in movies with invisible people, that invisible people always eat something and you can see it? if im right, isn't invisibility the idea of bending light around you, basically like wrapping yourself in a blanket (analogy people). so you shouldn't see the food or whatever if its internal right?

:confused:

The idea behind that form of invisibility is that the body is made transparent and is also given the same light bending properties as air. Making an organism transport is possible but the only way to make it so they bend light like air is to give them near equivalent density, aka vaporize them!

The idea behind that form of invisibility is that the body is made transparent and is also given the same light bending properties as air. Making an organism transport is possible but the only way to make it so they bend light like air is to give them near equivalent density, aka vaporize them!

Does air bend light very much? If so, why is this important in invisibility?

From what I understand, in Hollow Man Kevin Bacon found a way of making individual cells invisible by rearranging its molecular constituents so that they would pass light through them rather than absorb and reflect. Unfory=tunately, most of the time these molecules were unstable.

In this case only when the food was digested and metabolized to for these moelcules would the food be invisible (i.e. only when it becomes part of you).

yes air bends light much. To understand this effect note how glass which is transparent also bends light, if you are in a vacuum (say space) you will notice how air bends light as you look at the edge of the earth, also note the sky is blue this is because air is scattering blue light more then red, you can see this same effect if you look through thick glass (which scatters green light.) Light is slowed as is passes through matter, the denser the matter the slower the light travels and the more its diffracted when it hits a density interface at a angle. You can imagine this if you think of a army of soldiers marching in line walking up to a swamp at a angle, one side hits the swamp before the other side and is slowed, the other side keeps on going at the faster speed, the marching line becomes bent.

Air only bends light significantly through about a few hundred kilometers though. Other than space effects, u shouldn't really see any.

Let me repeat my self: to bend light like air you need to slow light at the same rate as air and thus you would need to have a similar molecular nature to air -- you would have the be as dense as air -- you would have the be atomized!

If you were just transparent you would look like glass, as in you would bend light differently then air because light would be slowed more when traveling through you and hence people could see the diffraction of light you make, thus you would not be invisible, you would be transparent.