The world’s first
‘fantasy-reality’ show began with the search for that which couldn’t be seen –
an invisibility cloak.
The first entry almost went unnoticed. It was an
invisibility cloak made of metascreen - ultra-thin copper tape affixed to
equally thin polycarbonate film. The cloak desisted from reflecting any kind of
waves and hence, the presence of an object behind it could never be felt.
Besides, little antennae on the cloak ensured that no radar could detect what
was being concealed, so a 3-dimensional object could be made absolutely
invisible from any angle.
Next came a Canadian company that based its invisibility
cloak on Quantum Stealth technology, with which it could clothe an entire army.
Now, soldiers could strike fearlessly in broad daylight without any fear of
being seen or detected. The material made rays of light bend around the object
instead of deflecting off it and could operate in any frequency.
The doll maker came up with a battery-operated invisibility
cloak. The concept of drawing from an external energy source helped - the
metasurface was fitted with strategically positioned amplifiers that drew
energy from the battery, thus making the cloak effective across a broader
frequency spectrum and suppressing visibility in varied conditions. (On a
tangential note, the fact that it is battery-operated has caught the fancy of a
few Asian countries that are currently trying to mass-produce it at a much
cheaper cost and flood the Indian market.)
The IT guy entered the contest with a cloak that was also an
analog computer, capable of performing complex calculations. (All these years,
you needed a screensaver to hide your chat windows when the boss came around,
but now, you could hide the entire computer by making it invisible.) However, it
is not yet known if you can do status updates on Facebook using the
cloak-computer, but you can sure get your integration and differentiation
problems solved by it. How? The IT whiz threw light on the subject by explaining
how the computer used light waves to create graph-like curves in space that determined
various calculus functions, while the cloak modified the characteristics of the
light waves to turn an object invisible.
A printer came next and demonstrated a simple way to
construct an invisibility cloak – just print it using a 3D printer. (So how does
one find out if the print out has arrived? We’ll leave the judges to deal with
it.) The cloak had perforations based on a specific algorithm that enabled it
to deflect microwaves, and was creating using stereolithographic technology - layers
of polymer plastic were added one over the other, carefully leaving out the
holes and perforations as dictated by the algorithm, until the cloak was, er,
invisible.
A tailor came up with his own idea - and created an
invisibility cloak using gold-coated silk thread. However, like Krypton for
Superman and the heel for Achilles, the cloak had a weak link - it could
function only at terahertz frequencies. It had already been tested on an
emperor and barring a little boy, no one could see through it. This inference
led to another glaring loophole - the invisibility cloak did not work on children.
Next was a cook. “If I can make noodles in 2 minutes, I can make
an invisibility cloak just as fast,” he boasted. He removed the layer of Teflon
from his saucepan and used it to make a cloak in just 15 minutes, using a
process called topology optimization. "I just used advanced computer
software and the algorithm did the rest," he explained nonchalantly.
Teflon proved to be an excellent alternative to any metamaterial, according to
him.
Finally, a college kid came on the show. "15 minutes?
Nonsense, I can tell you how to become invisible in 3 seconds flat." The judges
looked at him, awestruck. "Oh it's
simple," he continued. "To become invisible, all you need to do is
stop talking." "I don't understand," a judge blurted out.
"We do it all the time in social media. Just turn off
the chat feature - you'll become invisible."
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