Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com pays everyone and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan strictly and I'm Lauren foc Obama and Lauren Today,
Speaker 1: I wanted to read a message that was sent to
Speaker 1: us via Twitter. Danny sent us to us and said,
Speaker 1: I have done an episode on the paper. Well, Danny,
Speaker 1: we we did an episode we being tech stuff in
Speaker 1: general way back, yeah, back in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: If Jonathan and Chris did an episode called how the
Speaker 1: Books Work. If you want to listen to that, probably
Speaker 1: very short episode. It was pushed on November of that year.
Speaker 1: But we figured that, you know, although the answer is
Speaker 1: technically yes, we have, we we thought that it was
Speaker 1: time for update, especially since the one that Chris and
Speaker 1: I did we really only covered one implementation and we
Speaker 1: were specifically looking at e inc, which we'll talk about
Speaker 1: again in this episode. But there it turns out people
Speaker 1: didn't weren't satisfied with just one implementation for this E
Speaker 1: paper idea. They decided to have a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: mind bending, lee complicated science E implementations that caused me
Speaker 1: to weep at my desk. Um the poor, the poor
Speaker 1: fellow with the English literature degree. But but I wanted
Speaker 1: to mention, first of all, you know what exactly is
Speaker 1: the paper before we go into any of the implementations.
Speaker 1: Why would you want an e paper display? What is
Speaker 1: so special about this particular type of display? Well, everything
Speaker 1: electronic is better. Well they're okay, one, it's electronics, so
Speaker 1: clearly better than any kind of regular paper. So wins
Speaker 1: over that. It's sometimes in scientific circles referred to as
Speaker 1: reflective electronic paper. And reflective is kind of the key
Speaker 1: term there because many screens are backlit, which causes which
Speaker 1: is awesome for various tchnologies of making you see stuff,
Speaker 1: but is pretty energy and efficient and also hard to
Speaker 1: see in really brightly lit areas. Right, So, for example,
Speaker 1: if we were to be watching some sort of amazing
Speaker 1: movie in a dark theater cave, we want something that's
Speaker 1: back lit, right, we want something that's projecting its own
Speaker 1: light or else you can't see anything. But if you're outside,
Speaker 1: say at the beach, or if you have a lamp on,
Speaker 1: yeah you've got Maybe you are just trying to read
Speaker 1: something simple and and also you just maybe you find
Speaker 1: that backlit display gets your makes your eyes tired after
Speaker 1: a while. It does lead to tired eyes. So you
Speaker 1: might want something where you're just putting light onto the
Speaker 1: device and then just reading based upon the light that's
Speaker 1: reflecting back to you. And that's what the paper is
Speaker 1: all about. It's really trying to mimic what actual paper
Speaker 1: does all by itself. So if you have a piece
Speaker 1: of paper and you've written stuff on it, and you're
Speaker 1: reading the stuff on that paper, newsplash, paper is not
Speaker 1: sending light into your eyeballs. It's a reflecting light from
Speaker 1: some other source back to you most of the time. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: if it's E paper and it is back lit, then
Speaker 1: I guess it could. Though again, most e paper, as
Speaker 1: we'll discuss, is not. Now there there's another advantage, like
Speaker 1: you said, the energy factor. Right, If I'm using a
Speaker 1: backlit display, that means there has to be some sort
Speaker 1: of light source that's shining out at me, and that
Speaker 1: requires energy for that to continue. We don't have some
Speaker 1: magical way to just make light come out without using energy.
Speaker 1: But a lot of these E paper displays have very
Speaker 1: energy efficient means of establishing some sort of image on
Speaker 1: the display and holding it there without havingout needing to
Speaker 1: continue pouring energy into the system exactly, so you have
Speaker 1: the two benefits there, the ability to look at this
Speaker 1: display in really well lit areas and the fact that
Speaker 1: it's not sipping tons of energy. Uh. They also, depending
Speaker 1: upon the implementation, can be flexible, So flex will displays
Speaker 1: are a pretty cool idea for a lot of different
Speaker 1: uh potential applications. A lot of them are kind of
Speaker 1: advertising related well sure, but you know also the just
Speaker 1: the pure concept of being able to take your your
Speaker 1: e book and roll it up and stick it in
Speaker 1: your backpack. Sure, or or have like an e paper
Speaker 1: display watch. I have an e paper display watch. The
Speaker 1: pebble which I'm wearing right now has an papers to it.
Speaker 1: In case you guys couldn't see that via the radio, right,
Speaker 1: it sometimes doesn't come across with the point point, but
Speaker 1: it has an e paper display. But you could also
Speaker 1: create an e paper display watch that is very very
Speaker 1: thin and flexible so that you could have it wrap
Speaker 1: around your whole wrist. And in fact, there are a
Speaker 1: few examples of that. A Japanese company made some really
Speaker 1: really super cool ones that I think was a limited
Speaker 1: run of five hundreds. They ended up being around twenty
Speaker 1: bucks apiece, but they look great and and yes, and
Speaker 1: this is all leading towards your incredible dream of having
Speaker 1: the electronic gauntlets. Yes, I won't be happy until I
Speaker 1: have of the e bracer, where again I can have
Speaker 1: all the little things like my my life force telling
Speaker 1: me how how much life force I have left, you know,
Speaker 1: in case I'm not aware of it at the time.
Speaker 1: You know, because I encounter some tough customers in my
Speaker 1: line of work, and sometimes exactly how tough they are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you you have to look at and see, like, well,
Speaker 1: let me let me guess how much of a beating
Speaker 1: can I take before I'm done? But all that being said,
Speaker 1: what where did this idea come from? Where where did
Speaker 1: we start really talking about eat ink and e paper.
Speaker 1: Even though the whole idea of this electronic display, of
Speaker 1: a reflective electronic display hit the public consciousness just in
Speaker 1: the past decade or so due to the popularity of
Speaker 1: the books and e readers and to kindle all of
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, um, the technology has actually been
Speaker 1: in development since the nineteen seventies. Some researchers at Xerox
Speaker 1: began experimenting with what they called gyra con it sounds
Speaker 1: like a transformer I love so much. Right, um. And
Speaker 1: these were little spheres of electrically charged plastic that were
Speaker 1: white on one side and black on the other and
Speaker 1: could rotate, hence the gyra kind of word there um.
Speaker 1: And they were suspended in oil between transparent electrodes. It
Speaker 1: could be used for signs, but they never really worked
Speaker 1: it out to be many miniaturized to the point of
Speaker 1: being really useful for something like a personal device, and
Speaker 1: it kind of was overlooked for a few decades until
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties when H M. I T and then
Speaker 1: a related Cambridge based company called e ink Corp. Began
Speaker 1: developing their own version of these gyrating electronic inc capsules
Speaker 1: in right, And of course the majorization important for multiple purposes. Right,
Speaker 1: not just so that you can have it fit into
Speaker 1: a form factor like an e book or a watch,
Speaker 1: but also just the idea of getting the right kind
Speaker 1: of resolution or up close viewing. Like you don't need
Speaker 1: it to be as as a higher resolution for like
Speaker 1: a sign outside, right, you need you need to be
Speaker 1: legible outside, but it doesn't have to have really sharp edges.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be able to get two inches
Speaker 1: away from it and right right. Whereas with books, you know,
Speaker 1: you're getting pretty up close and personal, and with a
Speaker 1: watch even more so. So obviously that was one of
Speaker 1: those things that need to be worked out. So how
Speaker 1: do they work today? Well, like I said at the
Speaker 1: very beginning, there are a lot of different implementations now
Speaker 1: that should not come as a huge surprise because with
Speaker 1: with displays in general, there are lots of ways of
Speaker 1: having a display show you stuff. Yeah. I think about televisions, yeah, tons,
Speaker 1: Like if we're talking just the flat screen type, you
Speaker 1: have plasma, you have l E ED, you have l
Speaker 1: C D. Then of course you have the good old
Speaker 1: cathode ray tube televisions of our childhood. Yeah, so they'll
Speaker 1: own one of those, do you. It's fancy. I think
Speaker 1: I have one in a garage somewhere and it's heavy. Um,
Speaker 1: but the nice fancy I think I'm meant heavy. The
Speaker 1: nice thing is that some of our old gaming consoles
Speaker 1: will still work with those because the ports match, right, yep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that you give up, you know,
Speaker 1: you start to see these these technologies no longer become compatible.
Speaker 1: That's I do still have a S N E S. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can't run that on a modern television without
Speaker 1: some some version, yeah, converter. So let's talk about the
Speaker 1: different types of E paper display technology. I think the
Speaker 1: most popular one on the market certainly right now is
Speaker 1: electrophoretic technology. That's correct, that is what e INK uses,
Speaker 1: the one that you mentioned, and e Ink, I think
Speaker 1: is the is the most well known company that does this.
Speaker 1: This is the story of technology you find in a
Speaker 1: lot of e readers, and so this uses that electrical
Speaker 1: charge to push stuff around. So the ink in an
Speaker 1: electrophoretic technology display can be lots of different stuff off.
Speaker 1: But the typically you'll you'll find these little plastic beads
Speaker 1: that may be dual colored where you have white on
Speaker 1: one side and black on the other, like I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: or some that are black and some that are white. Right,
Speaker 1: you would just have two different separate kinds of beads,
Speaker 1: and you would have them uh oppositely charged. So let's
Speaker 1: say that the the white beads are positively charged and
Speaker 1: the black beads are negatively charged. Now, the top layer,
Speaker 1: the screen layer, the part that we are looking at
Speaker 1: our eyeballs are hitting. That is clear, it's transparent. Otherwise
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be very useful. We had a solid plastic
Speaker 1: E reader that that was opaque, it wouldn't do you
Speaker 1: any good, not very much. Now, on the opposite side,
Speaker 1: the foundation of the device, that's the back pain. That's
Speaker 1: where everything is built on top of. So let's say
Speaker 1: you have an electrode down over on the back pain.
Speaker 1: You've got one on the peer level as well. And
Speaker 1: you you remember, you've got the the white beads that
Speaker 1: have a positive charge and the black beads that have
Speaker 1: a negative charge. If you create a negative charge at
Speaker 1: the bay at the back pain, then that's going to
Speaker 1: repel all those black beads, because like charges repel one another.
Speaker 1: So all those black beads are gonna rise to the
Speaker 1: top to the clear electrode the screen part which means
Speaker 1: if you're looking down at the e reader, the screen
Speaker 1: just turns black. Right, the white uh particles, the white
Speaker 1: beads will all sink to the bottom because uh they're
Speaker 1: positively charged and positive negative charges attract one another, so
Speaker 1: they're all at the bottom. Now. The nice thing is,
Speaker 1: once you've done that, it's set. It's going to be
Speaker 1: like that until you change introduce another charge exactly so uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's fantastic because that means you no longer have
Speaker 1: to pour power into this device in order to have
Speaker 1: whatever it is you've established. If you were to swap
Speaker 1: the charges and suddenly make the electrode at the base
Speaker 1: be a positively charged electrode, then it would repel all
Speaker 1: the white beads. They would rise to the top, all
Speaker 1: the black beads would come to the bottom, and you
Speaker 1: would have a blank screen. That's what would look like
Speaker 1: to you write. And by varying that across the entire
Speaker 1: surface of the back pain, then you can have these
Speaker 1: black people patterns and words and pictures and whatever you
Speaker 1: want exactly. And depending upon how small those beads are,
Speaker 1: you can have some pretty interesting some pretty good resolution.
Speaker 1: So it's not like, you know, it's not like there's
Speaker 1: only like ten beads in here. Now, there's millions of
Speaker 1: the little things. So that's your basic premise with electrophoretic technology,
Speaker 1: but they're not all uh, specifically in that implementation in
Speaker 1: inc is that's the style of eating those those beads
Speaker 1: are just a hundred microns, Why so a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: can fit into one square inch of quote unquote paper. Uh,
Speaker 1: so you're talking, like I said, millions of these things,
Speaker 1: depending upon the size of your display. Obviously, larger displays
Speaker 1: are going to need more beads nor to have that resolution.
Speaker 1: But another variation of this uses something called micro cups. Microcups,
Speaker 1: they're kind of what they sound like. They're little into
Speaker 1: visually sealed cups of of of stuff. You've got a
Speaker 1: bead in these and you also have um some some
Speaker 1: dye in them. So the idea is that if you
Speaker 1: pull the bead to the top towards the screen side,
Speaker 1: you get a blank screen. When they're pulled down to
Speaker 1: the base of the little individual micro cups of the
Speaker 1: shows through and creates your color pattern. Yeah. So you
Speaker 1: can think of each micro cup as an individual pixel
Speaker 1: in this entire screen, and by pulling various beads down,
Speaker 1: you create what are the words and the patterns and
Speaker 1: the pictures and all that kind of stuff. Uh, same
Speaker 1: basic principle, though you're just using electric charge to move
Speaker 1: something around. In this case, it's just one bead instead
Speaker 1: of different pairs of beads. So very interesting. These again
Speaker 1: are the most popular I would say approaches. The micro
Speaker 1: cups approaches supposedly better for flexible displays, just more effective.
Speaker 1: It's easy to implement than the the you know, massive
Speaker 1: number of beads approach. But that, if you know, that
Speaker 1: was essentially the version we covered in the first tech
Speaker 1: Stuff episode back in two thousand eight. So everything from
Speaker 1: here on out is new and scary and possibly going
Speaker 1: to make me uh fall over in attempts to pronounce
Speaker 1: some of these words. So uh, I'm just just prepare yourself, folks.
Speaker 1: You can you can do it. Jonathan coolisteric liquid crystal
Speaker 1: display technology. Let's hit it all right. So liquid crystals,
Speaker 1: those are pretty awesome. They can behave kind of like
Speaker 1: a liquid and kind of like a solid. So solids,
Speaker 1: their molecular structure is really stable right there in a
Speaker 1: set pattern. They don't move around. They maintain their orientation
Speaker 1: in respect to each other. Liquid is different. Those molecules
Speaker 1: and a liquid can be all willing and they and
Speaker 1: move around and they don't have to maintain their respective orientations.
Speaker 1: So this is easy to imagine if you're thinking about
Speaker 1: just the way water moves. All those little molecules are
Speaker 1: moving all over the place inside that amount of water,
Speaker 1: whereas if you're looking at a solid table at tables
Speaker 1: not moving. It's not, at least not in respect to
Speaker 1: you know, one part of the table is not moving
Speaker 1: in respect to another part of the table, unless you've
Speaker 1: got a really weird table. So liquid crystals can behave
Speaker 1: like either solids or liquids, depending upon the situation. Now,
Speaker 1: colosteric liquid crystals have stable phases, very important. You want
Speaker 1: it to be able to set into a particular orientation
Speaker 1: and maintain it. But um, because if it didn't, then
Speaker 1: you couldn't use it for something like creating pictures and words.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be stable. It would just keep changing and
Speaker 1: you might have a really cool piece of wal art,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't be useful or maybe only once very
Speaker 1: very differently, right, kind of a million monkeys in a
Speaker 1: room with typewriters kind of way. Yeah, So liquid crystals
Speaker 1: in these displays, they form a helical structure also known
Speaker 1: as a chiral structure, and depending upon their orientation, they
Speaker 1: either reflect light or the absorb light. So by running
Speaker 1: a current through a display with these crystals, you can
Speaker 1: orient them in such a way that they form shapes
Speaker 1: like words and pictures, and like electrophoretic displays, these are
Speaker 1: the term is by stable. I think that we forgot
Speaker 1: to mention that up there. By stable is what it
Speaker 1: means when something can stick a certain way without having
Speaker 1: to put an electric and until you put an electric
Speaker 1: charge back through it. Right, So in other words, once
Speaker 1: you have it set, it's good to go. This is
Speaker 1: the same thing. Like I'm sure you've heard the argument
Speaker 1: about people who before we were allowed to have electronic
Speaker 1: devices on at takeoff and landing and people would say
Speaker 1: you need to turn off your e reader devices. There
Speaker 1: are folks who are saying, you know, this isn't it's
Speaker 1: not assuming power unless they turn the page because it's
Speaker 1: not producing any kind of radiation at all unless I
Speaker 1: butt right, Yeah, it's yeah, exactly, as long as the
Speaker 1: WiFi is not on, then it's not doing anything. Also,
Speaker 1: mine doesn't even have an off switch. Yeah that's true.
Speaker 1: Someone's like, all all you're doing by making me put
Speaker 1: it away is denying need a pleasure of reading. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're making me focus on one of the more
Speaker 1: stressful moments of flight and uh and that's not doing
Speaker 1: anyone any good. Um. Yeah, So like you were saying,
Speaker 1: both of those implementations are the kind where you don't
Speaker 1: constantly sit power. You only do it whenever you need
Speaker 1: to change whatever the uh. The various orientations are whether
Speaker 1: it's the beads in the electro boretic or it's the
Speaker 1: liquid crystals in the callisteric. Okay, let's move on to
Speaker 1: electra wedding. All right, this is the problem that elderly
Speaker 1: robots have. It's a serious issue. I'm glad I'm not
Speaker 1: the only person who thought immediately, yeah, that's something else.
Speaker 1: I think it all depends. Oh, Jonathan, I'm a terrible person.
Speaker 1: Electra wedding technology has nothing to do with that. And
Speaker 1: for all those people who out there who hate my
Speaker 1: sense of humor, I'm sorry, but I am twelve so
Speaker 1: actually sorry, not sorry. I think it's what he means. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, that's who I am. But electro wedding
Speaker 1: technology actually, it's a really interesting approach. Again. Now we're
Speaker 1: using electric electricity to change the shape of a confined
Speaker 1: water slash oil interface. So you know, water and oil
Speaker 1: they don't mix. We've got sayings about it, uh, And
Speaker 1: you can try it at home. You can put some
Speaker 1: water and some oil in a glass together and you'll
Speaker 1: see they do not mix together. And if you were
Speaker 1: to try and mix them together, they would separate. So
Speaker 1: that's important. But when you have no voltage applied to
Speaker 1: this particular type of display, the oil forms a film
Speaker 1: between the water and an electrode the stream, which is hydrophobic. Now,
Speaker 1: hydrophobic just means that water won't stick to it, right.
Speaker 1: It's like if you've ever had any kind of rain
Speaker 1: X or other film that you put on your windshield,
Speaker 1: your car's windshield so that when you go out in
Speaker 1: the rain, it just beats up and rolls off. Kind
Speaker 1: of terminator one thousand style that is that is hydrophobics, hydrophobic.
Speaker 1: Fancy word for a simple concept. Ye. So this uh,
Speaker 1: this way of creating the oil, and on top of
Speaker 1: this this water level that's what creates a colored pixel.
Speaker 1: And applying a voltage makes the water push that oil aside,
Speaker 1: which creates a transparent pixel. So if the oils on top,
Speaker 1: you get something. You can get a color color, right,
Speaker 1: whatever the color of the back pain is. Actually, so
Speaker 1: if you had a blue back pain, you just see blue. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then if you were to switch the water in place,
Speaker 1: it would be a lighter color of blue because it
Speaker 1: would be transparent more than opaque. The way you would
Speaker 1: get a blank screen is if you had a white backplate.
Speaker 1: You know, I think I've been saying back pain and
Speaker 1: I think it might be because my chair is really weird,
Speaker 1: but no, it's back plate. Um. But yeah, if the
Speaker 1: backplate has a white surface, you get that transparency that's
Speaker 1: seen as a blank screen. And uh, the neat thing
Speaker 1: about this is that it's it responds faster than the
Speaker 1: other versions we've talked about. So the ones we talked
Speaker 1: about it previously, they're great for things like books, they're
Speaker 1: not so great for video. I mean, you you can
Speaker 1: find some of these e paper displays that use electrophorredic
Speaker 1: technology that yeah, your your refresh rate has to be
Speaker 1: pretty high to interpret it as as video. You might
Speaker 1: be able to get something that plays like a simple
Speaker 1: game of snake or something along those lines, but it
Speaker 1: tends to be you know, pretty slow in response, slow
Speaker 1: enough for us to detect, whereas, uh, the electro wedding
Speaker 1: technology can move fast enough where we're not able to
Speaker 1: notice the change. Um that way, you know, it's not
Speaker 1: like there's a lag or delay that's noticeable to us.
Speaker 1: So it moves fast enough where we could use it
Speaker 1: to show video, and it also requires less energy than
Speaker 1: your typical lc D display, So it's still one of
Speaker 1: those that is suitable for that kind of thing without
Speaker 1: you know, breaking the bank on your electric bill. It's
Speaker 1: not by stable, however, because you do have to continuously
Speaker 1: apply electricity to retain an image. So if you were
Speaker 1: to remove the electric charge, the water would move out
Speaker 1: the way again, the oil would come to the surface,
Speaker 1: and you would just have uh, you know, a black
Speaker 1: screen or whatever color the oil happened to be in
Speaker 1: the and the back plate had happened to be. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting. Um. The only company I could
Speaker 1: find that's actually working on this technology is called liquid Vista,
Speaker 1: and it was a company that was spun off by Phillips.
Speaker 1: Phillips had been doing the research into this and they
Speaker 1: kind of said, well, it's not only gonna work for us,
Speaker 1: but we will spin off, you know, kind of sell
Speaker 1: off this this research division because there's there's potential for
Speaker 1: that particular technology. And that was not a not a
Speaker 1: pun potential with electricity, and are you sure it wasn't,
Speaker 1: so it was a pun, I guess, So it was
Speaker 1: an unintentional pun. Those are the best kind. Those are
Speaker 1: basically the only kind that I make, and I'm a
Speaker 1: little bit embarrassed every time. So how does this electroc
Speaker 1: wedding differentiate itself from electro fluid I. That's a good
Speaker 1: question that I did not understand at first. I had
Speaker 1: to read a few different pieces to really understand electro
Speaker 1: fluidic technology. Well, it uses liquid, as you would imagine
Speaker 1: with fluid I. That does say that there's some sort
Speaker 1: of fluid involved, but instead it's using a liquid pigment
Speaker 1: and a polymer layer that has micro cavities in it.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you are looking down at the screen.
Speaker 1: That screen actually has lots and lots of teeny tiny
Speaker 1: pin prick holes like microscopic level. So just when you
Speaker 1: look at it just looks like a blank screen, doesn't
Speaker 1: You don't actually notice the pin bricks. You can't pick
Speaker 1: them out with your eye. No, no, you can't. And
Speaker 1: so when you apply an elector charge it because of
Speaker 1: the way micro fluid motion happens in the presence of
Speaker 1: an electric field, the pigment will start to go through
Speaker 1: those micro cavities and fill out some of the space
Speaker 1: and become pixels within the display. Okay, So it sounds
Speaker 1: at first, when you think about it, sounds like you're
Speaker 1: looking down and you just see liquid bubbling up out
Speaker 1: of a hole and slowly filling up the screen. That's
Speaker 1: not exactly what is. Each of these little micro cavities
Speaker 1: is self contained. So each of those tiny little holes
Speaker 1: is allowing enough oil to come up or pigment to
Speaker 1: come up, to combine with the other ones in that
Speaker 1: immediate area to make the edge of an letter E
Speaker 1: for example. Sure. Sure, I didn't look into this one personally,
Speaker 1: but I know that the way that some materials interact
Speaker 1: with fluids involves a process called absorption, which basically means
Speaker 1: that electrically speaking, they're kind of sticking to the edges
Speaker 1: of it. And I suspect that that is what is
Speaker 1: going on here from what I understand. Yes, we're getting,
Speaker 1: by the way, into levels of physics that I never
Speaker 1: explored in college or in in high school. This is
Speaker 1: a heavy physics stay for us. Yeah, micro fluid I
Speaker 1: physics is complicated stuff. Uh. And and we should also
Speaker 1: mention that this particular implementation is something that some companies
Speaker 1: are looking into, but it's not necessarily something you're gonna
Speaker 1: find in a lot of products right now, whether you're
Speaker 1: talking consumer or commercial. But it is an interesting approach,
Speaker 1: and prototypes have all been in black and white as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, but the manufacturers say that
Speaker 1: they would be able to make color versions as well,
Speaker 1: so that you could have based upon the level of
Speaker 1: voltage applied, different colors of pigment come up, and so
Speaker 1: you could have a full color image on your e reader,
Speaker 1: which is one of those things that people have wondered
Speaker 1: about for a while. I mean, you can you can
Speaker 1: get that if you have a back lit one. That's
Speaker 1: pretty easy, certainly, or if you have independent multiple layers
Speaker 1: of different colors of monochrome, right you could do it
Speaker 1: that way. And of course these layers are so thin
Speaker 1: that to us it would all appear as if it's
Speaker 1: on the same plane. But technically you were able to
Speaker 1: get shrink really down to the micro size. You could
Speaker 1: tell they were on separate kind of floors if you
Speaker 1: think about it, if you think of it, or or
Speaker 1: layers in a sandwich, since we're talking about electrodes being
Speaker 1: kind of like or cake in this case a mini
Speaker 1: layered cake as only hypothetical that's true, which you know,
Speaker 1: that's it's not the best kind of cake, but it's
Speaker 1: better than the cake being alive. Um. Now, those displays,
Speaker 1: the in particular, the these electro fluidic displays have a
Speaker 1: high reflectivity, higher in fact than the other ones we've
Speaker 1: talked about, and potentially, according again to manufacturers, that reflectivity
Speaker 1: could reach the point where it's the same as paper.
Speaker 1: So while we talk about e readers and the paper
Speaker 1: having high reflectivity so it's like a piece of paper,
Speaker 1: most of them don't come close to having the same
Speaker 1: reflectivity as an actual piece of paper. They're just better
Speaker 1: than say, a backlet display. From why I understand, this
Speaker 1: particular implementation sounds like it would be the closest we
Speaker 1: would get to having, you know, a one to one
Speaker 1: correlation between paper and the paper as far as reflectivity
Speaker 1: is concerned. So that means it would have the best
Speaker 1: visibility in bright light. Um uh. And we'll talk more
Speaker 1: about reflectivity a little bit later. We certainly will that
Speaker 1: we have electrochromic technology. This one's also really cool. I
Speaker 1: had no clue how many different versions of the paper
Speaker 1: there really were. Yeah, So so far we've been talking
Speaker 1: about two basic sides of a coin of the paper,
Speaker 1: A vertical orientation of of bringing something to or away
Speaker 1: from a surface in order to make color, or a
Speaker 1: horizontal orientation of pushing stuff around inside the surface in
Speaker 1: order to make it go. This is uh, this is
Speaker 1: a chemical reaction. Yeah, electrochemical reactions. So some materials will
Speaker 1: change color as they undergo reduction or oxidat So you
Speaker 1: can think of it this in a in a sense
Speaker 1: like iron as it rusts turns red, right, I mean
Speaker 1: that's the way fresh round. Yeah, So that's one way
Speaker 1: of looking at this. But these particular materials which have
Speaker 1: names that are far too complex and too long for
Speaker 1: me to even pronounce, so I didn't even bother to
Speaker 1: put them into the notes. I just at that point
Speaker 1: I was like, nope. But the color change in this
Speaker 1: case is completely reversible for these particular types of materials
Speaker 1: when they undergo oxidization. You can just control it through
Speaker 1: applying an electrical charge. So if you send an electrical
Speaker 1: charge to it, it will change color, and you send
Speaker 1: a different electrical charge to it, it it changes back. Also,
Speaker 1: the change in color is stable until another charge is applied,
Speaker 1: so it's again a bistable display. So you you turn
Speaker 1: the page, it would send the charge out to the
Speaker 1: right parts of the screen to either have it switch,
Speaker 1: or if it didn't need to switch, there'll be no
Speaker 1: charge sent there. So like if there's a particular pixel
Speaker 1: that needs to retain its color, it just won't get
Speaker 1: a charge. Then everything else will get the charge swap
Speaker 1: the way it needs to swap, and then you're good
Speaker 1: until you need to change the page again. And this
Speaker 1: kind of technology is is also being implemented in other ways,
Speaker 1: isn't it absolutely? In fact, you can you can buy
Speaker 1: stuff that has this technology in it right now. So
Speaker 1: if you've ever heard about smart windows, windows that can
Speaker 1: actually change their tent depending upon your demands, So yeah,
Speaker 1: at your will, not like not like sunglasses that have
Speaker 1: the color change film, right, Yeah, it's not that, not
Speaker 1: that transition lens kind of technology, which is more of
Speaker 1: a yeah, that's something where you know you're not even
Speaker 1: part of the equation. No, I'm talking about Let's say
Speaker 1: that you've got a dimmer switch for your window where
Speaker 1: you can actually change the opacity of your window, um dynamically,
Speaker 1: you can make it darker or lighter as you will.
Speaker 1: So that sort of technology tends to have this approach,
Speaker 1: This implementation in it where you change the electric charge
Speaker 1: by flipping a switch or turning a dimmer and then
Speaker 1: it ends up either making it darker or lighter, depending
Speaker 1: upon whatever it is you told it to do. So
Speaker 1: pretty cool stuff. Now you might think that we're through.
Speaker 1: We are far from through. Here we go. We will
Speaker 1: never be through interferometric modulator displays. And I know, the
Speaker 1: longer I go, the more it sounds like I'm making stuff.
Speaker 1: I promise I'm not making stuff up. These displays create
Speaker 1: colors using interference of reflected light. So they're not even
Speaker 1: using any kind of beads or anything like that. They're
Speaker 1: specifically reflecting specific types of light to your eyeballs so
Speaker 1: that you can see whatever it is that it's you're
Speaker 1: supposed to see. So, so this is going to be
Speaker 1: a series of mirrors inside the screen that are going
Speaker 1: to be reflecting light in different ways. Essentially, that's what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. It's a reflective surface. You might as
Speaker 1: well call it a mirror because that's the that's the
Speaker 1: easiest way of explaining it. But imagine that you have
Speaker 1: a mirror that can only reflect a certain hue of
Speaker 1: light in particular wavelength. Yeah, so let's say it's blue.
Speaker 1: And when you look in that mirror, everything that you see,
Speaker 1: even though it's a reflection of what what is in
Speaker 1: front of you, is going to be blue, and the
Speaker 1: rest of the wavelengths are being absorbed and that blue
Speaker 1: stuff is being shot back out. Yeah, so you can
Speaker 1: see yourself if you were smurf and everything in in
Speaker 1: in your world was smurfy, because it would all be blue.
Speaker 1: But I don't think I want that world, probably not.
Speaker 1: But so you could have a monochromatic display, which would
Speaker 1: mean that all the mirrors would reflect a specific color
Speaker 1: and that would be the only color that would show
Speaker 1: up whenever you were uh sending a charge through. Or
Speaker 1: you can have a multicolor display, which would have multiple
Speaker 1: little mirrors for each pixel. You would call them sub pixels.
Speaker 1: So to create any individual color, you might have just
Speaker 1: certain types of the mirrors showing, or maybe pairs of
Speaker 1: the mirrors, because it would be kind of like a
Speaker 1: color display, you know where you have that uh the
Speaker 1: either the red, green, blue or the cyan magenta. You
Speaker 1: know that that approach um. So you would have all
Speaker 1: those little subpixels to make that multicolor display, and you
Speaker 1: only would need to the to change the orientation of
Speaker 1: the mirrors and use power for that. So again, once
Speaker 1: you turn to page, once the mirrors are in the
Speaker 1: right orientation, yeah, then all it's doing is just reflecting
Speaker 1: light to you. So you just have light hitting that screen,
Speaker 1: it reflects back and it's fine. When you turn the page,
Speaker 1: then it changes the orientation of those mirrors, whether it's
Speaker 1: pointing different ones at you so you can see different colors,
Speaker 1: or they just turn so that it's hitting the backspace
Speaker 1: backplate and you're getting a blank page that way, whatever
Speaker 1: that happens to be, that's when it would consume power.
Speaker 1: So again, very much a bistable approach. Really interesting stuff
Speaker 1: obviously wouldn't be good for video. You're talking about changing
Speaker 1: the orientation of all these reflective surfaces each time you
Speaker 1: turn the page. It's probably not the fastest implementation I
Speaker 1: would not imagine. So Okay, so we've talked about all
Speaker 1: of this great stuff. I have to imagine that our
Speaker 1: dear magical friend nanotechnology has to be involved in one
Speaker 1: of these. It butts its head into things, sooner or later. Yes,
Speaker 1: nanotech comes in the form of photonic crystal technology. This
Speaker 1: is fairly recent as far as the different implementations go
Speaker 1: and photonic crystals are nanostructures that are arranged in a
Speaker 1: regular pattern. So imagine that you've got like a block
Speaker 1: of these things and they're all each one is made
Speaker 1: up of an individual little sphere. And when you change
Speaker 1: the shape of that that block of spheres, like you
Speaker 1: stretch it out, or you compress it down, or you
Speaker 1: just move it in some way, the allor changes. So
Speaker 1: if you are able to say, uh, implant these nanostructures
Speaker 1: into a polymer, a stretchable polymer, and then when you
Speaker 1: apply electricity two said polymer, the polymer changes shape, which
Speaker 1: by its very nature, because you have these nano structures
Speaker 1: implanted in the polymer, it means the shape of that
Speaker 1: that polymer pattern is going to change. That changes the
Speaker 1: way light reflects off of it. It creates the pictures
Speaker 1: that you want to stay. Yeah, so uh yeah, if
Speaker 1: you think of it, like if you were to imagine
Speaker 1: maybe a sheet of rubber and you have a bunch
Speaker 1: of marbles that are that are like embedded in that
Speaker 1: sheet of rubber, and you pull the rubber tight so
Speaker 1: that you see that the marble start to move away
Speaker 1: from each other. That's kind of what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: but on the nanoscale, and remember a nanometer is one
Speaker 1: billion of a meter. We're talking super super small here,
Speaker 1: so it's not something you would ever be able to observe,
Speaker 1: not even a light microscope depending upon the size of
Speaker 1: these these particular structures, so teeny tiny stuff. And it
Speaker 1: does have some current drawbacks, which is that one, if
Speaker 1: you are looking at trying to create color display, the
Speaker 1: contrast between colors isn't very strong, so your pictures don't
Speaker 1: tend to be very clearly vibrant. Yeah. Uh, there are
Speaker 1: from what I understand, top men working on it right now. Uh,
Speaker 1: top men, And anything involving nanotechnology also is usually on
Speaker 1: the expensive end. Yes, And it's it's definitely, you know,
Speaker 1: one of those things where you've got several research groups
Speaker 1: looking into the feasibility of this approach and whether or
Speaker 1: not it makes more sense. I mean, we have all
Speaker 1: these different options right now. It can be that maybe
Speaker 1: in twenty years time most of these fade away as
Speaker 1: we start to see which ones make the most sense,
Speaker 1: whether economically or you know, whichever one gives the best experience.
Speaker 1: That sort of thing is really going to determine which
Speaker 1: of these stick around, and there may be some of
Speaker 1: these that are really good for very specific and implementations
Speaker 1: everything else. All right, Our last one on the list
Speaker 1: is one that I am incredibly fascinated by. It's called
Speaker 1: read or reverse emulsion electrophoretic display technology. Yeah, this is neat,
Speaker 1: neat stuff. Okay, you've got two different types of liquid
Speaker 1: in one display. In this case, you've got a base
Speaker 1: liquid that is nonpolarized right into the words normal old material.
Speaker 1: You're not going to have it react to an electric charge.
Speaker 1: Then you have a polarized dyed liquid. So imagine that
Speaker 1: you've got like a giant beaker filled with clear liquid.
Speaker 1: We'll just say it's it's it's some sort of like
Speaker 1: water like stuff. It's it's perfectly neutral, so it's not
Speaker 1: going to react to electricity. Um. But then you put
Speaker 1: in it this bluish dye and it's got a polar
Speaker 1: Ei element to it, and you mix it up really
Speaker 1: good so that maybe there's a light bluish tinge to
Speaker 1: the water, but otherwise you can't. You can't. But then
Speaker 1: when you apply an electric charge, you can gather all
Speaker 1: that blue dye into a specific spot and it will
Speaker 1: suddenly look like it's coalescing into almost a solid object
Speaker 1: within this liquid. Yeah. So if you were to do
Speaker 1: that in a display format where you have a very
Speaker 1: controlled environment, so it's not again, it's not like a
Speaker 1: dish that just has all this liquid in it. It's
Speaker 1: in very specific locations. You could actually create the electric
Speaker 1: charge so that the die coalesces exactly where you want
Speaker 1: it to and it becomes an electronic piece of paper.
Speaker 1: This this is the one that sounds like two. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think of this as as if you were able
Speaker 1: to write on a sheet of paper and then see
Speaker 1: all the words suddenly gloam up into a ball of
Speaker 1: ink in the center of the page and then become
Speaker 1: new words across the page. It's very sort of Terry
Speaker 1: gilliam esque kind of image in my head. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: sort of what this thing can do, except of course,
Speaker 1: it's doing it electronically. It's not physically altering the the
Speaker 1: actual INC. Uh No, And this one is really extra
Speaker 1: super new. Yeah. Yeah, this is one of those that
Speaker 1: again is uh there's actually a company that's just working
Speaker 1: on trying to develop the INC. It's not even going
Speaker 1: to be developing a display for this INC. So we
Speaker 1: are we are at least a couple of years away
Speaker 1: from seeing this working in any kind of implementation, apart
Speaker 1: from maybe some really early prototypes. But it's just it's
Speaker 1: it's cool to see all the different things we can
Speaker 1: do with just playing with electricity and creating this same
Speaker 1: sort of effect through very different implementations. I just I
Speaker 1: think it's fascinating that people can take the same basic
Speaker 1: uh concept. Yeah, the end goal is the same, and
Speaker 1: ultimately the thing that makes everything change electricity is the same,
Speaker 1: but everything in between those two points is totally different,
Speaker 1: so different. Yeah, and it's fascinating to me, especially because
Speaker 1: it's such a material's heavy based technology, and you know,
Speaker 1: as we get better materials and as our manufacturing process
Speaker 1: is improved, we're going to see huge improvements in this
Speaker 1: kind of um. You know, a lot of what is
Speaker 1: going to be involved is coming up with stuff that
Speaker 1: has really non reflective films, you know, screens and very
Speaker 1: very reflective materials creating the pixels inside those screens. Right,
Speaker 1: So what you're saying is that the the surface isn't reflective,
Speaker 1: because otherwise you would just be it would be like
Speaker 1: holding a mirror and shining light in your eyes. But
Speaker 1: that the the ink itself, whatever you want to call
Speaker 1: that inc whether it's little solid particles or fluid, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, that would need to be the super reflective
Speaker 1: stuff so that you have a nice sharp contrast. Yes,
Speaker 1: the less reflective the material of film and the more
Speaker 1: reflective the material of the pixels, the sharper the image
Speaker 1: overall will be UM. Luckily, this kind of idea applies
Speaker 1: to other fields as well that are also very lucrative.
Speaker 1: For example, in solar panels. Solar panels are super super
Speaker 1: effective when a lot of light gets through the panel's surface.
Speaker 1: Perhaps obviously if the light is reflecting off the whatever
Speaker 1: protective layers on the top of the panel, then you're
Speaker 1: losing that light cannot capture that and and convert it
Speaker 1: to electricity. Right, So people are working on creating materials
Speaker 1: that have very low reflection. We talked over on our
Speaker 1: other show Forward Thinking UM with Joe. We did an
Speaker 1: episode on biomimicry, and it featured some of the anti
Speaker 1: reflective stuff that people are doing based on moth size um,
Speaker 1: which happened to be covered in this nanostructure that kind
Speaker 1: of just funnels photons straight through UM that also happened
Speaker 1: to be called corneal nipple displays, which I think is
Speaker 1: my favorite science term of the year. I can't I
Speaker 1: can't say it without giggling. They're they're little, they're the well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's for their little conical shapes. So
Speaker 1: I mean it makes perfect sense. You know, you call it,
Speaker 1: call it as you see it. Um that that episode,
Speaker 1: by the way, if you would like to listen to it,
Speaker 1: is called bio Mimetics and it published on June. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're not listening to Forward Thinking, if you're a
Speaker 1: fan of tech stuff, you'd be a fan of Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: trust us absolutely. And in addition to helping out with
Speaker 1: the contrast of these screens, getting these light efficiencies worked
Speaker 1: out would also help allow for multi color e paper.
Speaker 1: Like I said, you know, one of those ways to
Speaker 1: do it involves having multiple transparent layers of different colors
Speaker 1: and so so you would have like a red layer,
Speaker 1: a green layer, a blue layer, a black layer, and
Speaker 1: then through combining those, depending upon what the commands were
Speaker 1: from the elect shrodes, you would be able to create
Speaker 1: a full color display. Uh. Again, if we're if we're
Speaker 1: talking about electro for for reddic then it would be uh,
Speaker 1: it would be great for full color illustrations for things
Speaker 1: like science textbooks that kind of thing. Comic books or
Speaker 1: comic books as another great example. Yeah, if you are
Speaker 1: getting comic books on an e reader, then you probably
Speaker 1: want to have full color because you can't really appreciate
Speaker 1: the artwork if it if it's if it's not a
Speaker 1: black and white comic, you're not able to fully appreciate
Speaker 1: all the work that went into generating it. Oh sure.
Speaker 1: Also just on an industrial level, I mean, in order
Speaker 1: to bring the paper into the same realm as regular
Speaker 1: old printed paper. You know, the entire color industry is
Speaker 1: is a really huge part of all of that. Advertisers
Speaker 1: you know, uh, Coke wants to use Coca Cola red,
Speaker 1: Ninja Turtles want to use Ninja turtle green, like like,
Speaker 1: everyone has very specific copyrighted colors that go along with
Speaker 1: their stuff. And until you allow people to make honestly advertisements, um,
Speaker 1: the same way that they would on print paper, it's
Speaker 1: never gonna take its place. Yeah. Yeah, well, so I
Speaker 1: know that we've talked in the past on tech stuff
Speaker 1: about the the idea of the paperless office. But yeah,
Speaker 1: until you're able to get into something like that where
Speaker 1: you're able to get really good color matching, it just
Speaker 1: isn't gonna happen. Um, And uh, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, Lauren, but I every every year it
Speaker 1: seems like I I a crew more paper, not less so.
Speaker 1: But anyway, yeah, it's interesting to talk about this technology.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously it's something that is becoming more and
Speaker 1: more popular. I mean the Kindle, Yeah, I love, I
Speaker 1: love all my kindles. Um, actually I need to get
Speaker 1: I need to get a new one, in fact, because
Speaker 1: my I busted my old one. You know. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: can I say? You read George rr Martin, You're bound
Speaker 1: to throw a book against the wall, and the book
Speaker 1: happens to be a like tronic you pay for it.
Speaker 1: So anyway, yeah, these are these It's a really cool technology.
Speaker 1: It's really one of those that was cutting edge and
Speaker 1: no one had heard about it just a few years ago. Really,
Speaker 1: and now everyone knows about it, but not everyone knows
Speaker 1: what makes it tick. Why do you have this thing
Speaker 1: where the only time it sets powers when you turn
Speaker 1: a page? And I think it's really interesting to explore
Speaker 1: the technology that makes it possible. So Danny, I want
Speaker 1: to thank you for sending in that suggestion, and if
Speaker 1: any of you have suggestions for future episodes of tech
Speaker 1: stuff then you can write us an email tech Stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. It is actually working now.
Speaker 1: It is weekend, completely confirmed, it is in fact working.
Speaker 1: You can also send it like Danny did, via Twitter
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