Radiant Oracle

5 responses to “Radiant Oracle”

1. 

   hurried friction

   Jun 8, 2009 at 8:52 pm

   I’d say it’s from the glass panes, don’t think you need to diffuse the light for this effect

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2. 

   cmlburnett

   Jun 8, 2009 at 9:00 pm

   Looks like regular reflection off the glass with water waves from the fountain & wind to give the speckled look.

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3. 

   jurvetson

   Jun 8, 2009 at 9:21 pm

   the light seems to radiate out over a 180 degree arc. If we just had parallel light rays from the sun on a clear day, I’d think you’d see a few reflected lines. The angle of incidence for the side panels would not reflect to the water…. Aha! The, lines do not trace to the center of the building cylinder… it is just the front panels. I’ll add a note above.

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4. 

   goodeye03 (Rich)

   Jun 10, 2009 at 1:05 pm

   Great reflections, great catch..

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5. 

   nhr

   Jun 10, 2009 at 10:29 pm

   My 2 cents 😉

   If a mirror is positioned perpendicularly to an incoming light ray, the incoming and reflected rays will be in perfect superposition — i.e. the angle between them would be zero degrees.

   Now, if you were to rotate that mirror by an angle "A", the angle between the incoming and reflected rays would be double the rotation angle, i.e. 2*A.

   It follows that:

   1) the reflections visible on the water, covering an angular sector S, must emanate from an arc of reflective window panes covering only an angular sector S/2 of the cylindrical building

   2) thus, if lines are traced along the reflections visible on the water, the intersection of these lines can never coincide with the cylindrical building’s central axis about which the glass panes have been rotated/positioned. In other words, the reflected lightrays physically cannot appear to emanate from the cylindrical building’s center.

   The fact that the reflections fall on water instead of, say, sand or concrete will affect their apparent intensity: the water surface will partially act as a mirror and reflect some of the light rays.

   – an observer who is in the direction of the water-reflected rays will see a quite bright reflection.

   – at other observation angles, only the faint scattering of the light by the particles in suspension in the water will be visible; the apparent intensity of the light that was originally reflected by the window panes will thus be quite low, even though all the window panes are probably reflecting the sunrays at about the same intensity.

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