A Liquid Lens Telescope

when you spin a liquid it makes a perfect Parabola this fact can be used to make a liquid mirror lens if I take some liquid gallium and then spin it you can see that it makes a perfect parabolic mirror where I can actually adjust the focal length by spinning it faster or slower look how cool this looks I can actually change the focal point of the mirror just by changing the rotational speed you can see how I can focus this light down to a single point by changing the speed this totally works we can get an almost perfect Focus point of light so the focal length of this mirror is just the gravitational constant divid 2 * the angular speed squared and believe it or not this is actually what they use in real telescopes called liquid mirror telescopes they have a slowly rotating plate of mercury or gallium alloy and they spin it to form a perfect Parabola that they use as the telescope's mirror these types of telescopes are beneficial because you can have a huge mirror that costs around 25 times less than a glass mirror

Channel: Action Lab Shorts

Views: 6,395,082

Keywords: liquid lens, liquid mirror telescope, liquid lenses

Id: wJwoZC5Halo

Length: 0min 59sec (59 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 29 2024