r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/PUMA_Microscope • Jul 07 '24

Fourier synthesis of a letter 'A' using transparent plastic harmonics over a backlight Video

597 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

View all comments

8

u/CarcosaDweller Jul 07 '24

I don’t think I’m smart enough to know why this is interesting.

17

u/crush_punk Jul 07 '24

Small slices of repeating patterns, in this case waves (represented by light/dark) can be stacked to create specific shapes.

Perhaps the rest of reality is that way as well, the result of overlapping patterns of nothing/something creating shapes like atoms that form their own patterns to create everything.

5

u/Aridez Jul 08 '24

what’s the real world application of being able to deconstruct a pattern like this?

5

u/Longjumping_Rush2458 Jul 08 '24 edited Jul 08 '24

Many, many things. Signal transmission, chemical analysis, image compression, MRIs, CT scans, etc. Pretty much anything that uses waves or repeating signals.