Plastic invisibility cloak hides you from people with plastic brains

Earlier this week there was suddenly news of an exciting new invisibility cloak. In the end, the story was driven by a blathering press release full of typically questionable science buzzwords. Add science by YouTube video, and yes, this looks like shoddy science at its best.

However, the interminably long “technical” video has some value in that it makes it clear what the material does and does not do. It might be best to think of the inventor as creating a kind of clever adaptive camouflage. I can kind of see how it might be useful to people with guns in some circumstances.

Let’s play with rulers

I think almost everyone has at one point owned a plastic ruler with an animation on it. By tilting the ruler, the images it contains appear to move. This works because the plastic coating consists of a series of stripes, creating what are called lenticular lenses. By changing angles, the focal stripe of the lens shifts left and right. At one angle you see one image and at a different angle you see a second image. If the images are similar enough, changing your perspective creates the illusion of a single item moving.

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