have you ever wanted to possess the power of invisibility well today brian cranston and i
are going to show you how to turn an object invisible
today is about refraction welcome to impossible science
hey guys it's jason latimer the world champion of magic now today's topic is invisibility then
i came up with a great experiment for you and to help me out i've got tv's favorite dad tv's
favorite scientist he's an actor director producer and all-around just amazing guy the one and only
brian cranston i love these things check this out hey brian thank you so much for joining me on
impossible science thank you so much for stopping by uh now i have to ask because i got into science
because i love magic did you experience a science experiment that really you remember to this day
well i shouldn't really talk too much about it but uh it was it was involving dea agents
okay i do less of that i do less of that in my magic
but right now we're going to learn about refraction by turning something
invisible we're going to use a pen and a water bottle what we're going to do
is we're going to take this pen and we're going to put it into that bottle like this let me put
on my safety goggles if i need safety goggles for this then i've done it horribly horribly wrong
we're gonna take this bed and this bottle and we're gonna go one two three
wow turn the bottle around let me see that
yeah it's inside there all right look at that any questions uh yeah a few like how the heck
did you do that uh should i just do it too so that everybody sees hey give it a shot give it a shot
uh i don't see any way possible for me to do the same thing that you did but you can and you will
okay you're probably wondering how does that work well first let's go over why we actually
see objects we see objects because light is bouncing off of everything
and it's coming back to our eye and if we want to prevent somebody from actually seeing something
all we have to do is prevent that light from reaching our eye that means we can either stop it
or bend it away and in this case we're going to bend it using refraction refraction is the term
we use to describe the bending of light as it passes from one medium or substance to another
for example let's say our two mediums are air and glass as light travels in the air it's traveling
in a straight line but when it travels from air into glass it bends then the light travels through
the glass and exits the other side changing mediums once again now from glass to air where
it bends a second time now if we curve the surface of that medium we can actually bend the direction
of our light rays even more this is how a lens works there are two distinct shapes for lenses
one is called concave the other one's convex a concave lens is used to diverge light away
where the shape of a convex lens converges light to a point where the rays will actually cross in
both cases these lenses are using refraction to purposely bend light check this out we're going
to take a laser i'm going to put a convex lens in that path and we can see how the light will bend
bend again and move towards that focus point all the light that's over here is passing through this
lens and bending down to here and because it's symmetrical we can assume the same thing about
this region is all the light is being bent and bent up to here that means this region right here
none of this light is exiting over here even if i move the laser around we can see that the
path always goes around that region why is that important because if none of this light reaches
our eye over here that means this region will be invisible now take a closer look at this shape
does that look familiar to you if i pass the laser around the side of the bottle all the light that's
coming through here is exiting up here so this region is invisible so that means anybody over
here is actually seeing up here and anything that's down here all the light that's going
through is being bent up here right this region that i was talking about earlier is invisible
in this bottle and that pen is in that region right now and so if i turn the bottle sideways
wow the trick to this is there's two pens all right the first one is the one you grab
i also mailed you another pen that i've waited put paper clips in it
so it actually will just sink oh yeah so just open up your bottle and drop the weighted one in okay
open up the bottom no no that would be the that's it open up the bottle and it goes down it goes
see not as maybe not as slick as your trick but it's in there so now when that pen is like this
you're actually looking at the lens curve this way and this way but when you turn it sideways
that lens yeah is now looking like yeah the convex lens it's gone and to make it appear
in there all you have to do is tilt it up like this now you can actually see that the light is
bending if you actually look through it you'll notice that everything on the other side of the
bottle is upside down yeah that's the light that's the top becoming the bottom and the
bottom becoming the top as it goes through it that's pretty cool so i can only see the pen if
i put it down here because like looking through it and right because now the light the light's
coming through bending up to your face right can they see that it looks completely disappeared wow
that's very cool now the only thing you need to do for people online to have fun with this one
is to use a second pen right so if you take the pen like this you just swat it like this yeah
you can bring your hand down now this very few people will look at this if you want to practice
at home you end up just putting tape on it and you don't have to worry about it at all you just
slap right and bring your hand down and present this so here's yeah here's your pen right and
nailed it as long as you listen to it rolling on the floor behind
me perfect yeah and then yeah oh i saw the i saw the little lap action going on there pulling it
off the back of the table that's that's all that you saw that i don't think other people would see
that okay i won't i won't call attention to it supposed to be looking at this but
this is now your optics of invisibility that's cool that's fun thank you watch do you see that
i have several ends i planted up my nasal cavity you can keep those pens now by the way bye
that's a really good trick thank you brian thank you so much for joining us on impossible science
i appreciate it thanks very much appreciate it well that's it for
today i hope you had fun turning things invisible by bending light through science
and if you did let me know by clicking the like button and subscribing to the channel
and until next time stay curious because the right question changes everything
i hate i hate this part you