Simon Cygielski wrote: > I think you might be mistaken. Light travels through a fiber cable not > 'straight' through along its centerline, but by reflecting many times > off the sides of its interior. The walls of the cable serve as an > incredibly long, flexible mirror (at very obtuse angles glass/air > surfaces reflect light with incredible efficiency - look at an SLR's > pentaprism - no mirrors, but the image you get is very clear). You can > transmit light signals, but I don't believe you'd get any sort of > cohesive image on the other end. The Polaroid backs work in a "one > strand=one image point" fashion. You still need an optical system > (lens/pinhole) to form the actual image.
This is why someone needs to try the experiment. Those of us who think it will work believe that because all the light that passes through a single optical fiber is subjected to the same number of reflections off the walls of the fiber any inage inherent in the light is retained. Because of its small diameter, the optical fiber acts like a pinhole where the entrance and exit of the hole are phisically separated, but optically linked. (One could call it an optical wormhole, rather than a pinhole. Remember that you hard it here first!) The optical light pipe instruments (in medicine it's called a laparoscope) use multiple aligned fibers and a lens optical system to get a brighter, more sharply focused image. (Sort of like a camera lens -- the fact that a lens cam make a brighter, sharper image than a pinhole does not mean that a pinhole does not form an image.) An optical fiber is a "light pipe." Having more of them does not magically make them form an image; that (as you correctly stated) is what the lens is for. But WE know that a very small opening can act like a lens. Who will be the first to perform the experiment? Mike
