A light sculpture mounted on a tall building near a park. Sunlight flows through the mirrors, is concentrated into a prismatic beam, and sent down to the park, where it passes through a mist fountain. (The mist is probably necessary for the beam to be visible in the air.) Where it lands is a big pot, where the gold once was... kids would enjoy this.-- cloudface, Oct 26 2004 <cue music> Somewhere under the rainbow. http://www.halfbake...der_20the_20rainbow [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 26 2004] You could project the light into here at the end... http://www.halfbake...doscope_20Cathedralshameless reference. [RayfordSteele, Oct 26 2004] (?) Rainbow optics http://www.sundog.c...k/rainbows/bows.htmsee comments on deeper links re apparent distance and angles [ConsulFlaminicus, Oct 27 2004] Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder http://www.amazon.c...86-5042462?v=glance [spiritualized, Oct 28 2004] I think this is a great idea. +-- sartep, Oct 26 2004 //where the gold once was//
Come on! Give us the gold as well! At least fake gold. A trasure-less rainbow pot would be the deception of many kid's (and grown ups). [+]-- Pericles, Oct 26 2004 Love it. S.S.P. Posted something similar [link]C'mon now who nuked this?Grow a backbone and put your mouth where your fishbone is already.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 26 2004 I love rainbows! [+]-- Machiavelli, Oct 26 2004 is it possible to reverse the rainbow with mirrors so that the horns point skyward? and a perfect circle would be nice too! I believe certain conditions make that possible naturally.
lovely idea +1-- po, Oct 26 2004 Perhaps something other than a pot of gold be found at the end of a rainbow in this enlightened age. I suggest a pot of golden oppurtunities, or the value of friendship, be found instead. +-- spiritualized, Oct 26 2004 [+] for this. [spiritualized] sp. "opportunities". And aside from the Care Bear Moral Vomit factor, how would you model the value of friendship anyway? I'd suggest a big lump of gold with "The Value of Friendship" carved into it. That way, you can point and say: "Look, good friends are worth their weight in gold.", while I say: "Good friends give you lumps of gold the size of your head". Everybody wins.-- DocBrown, Oct 26 2004 "Skittles..."-- jutta, Oct 26 2004 no leprechauns?
'and stay away from my lucky charms!!'-- etherman, Oct 26 2004 I love ideas like this -' Teach Yourself to Purr' is another one. There is simply no bad angle to them whatsoever. The worst thing you could say is "That would be ok I guess." So which misanthrope put in the bones then?-- wagster, Oct 26 2004 somebody blind?-- etherman, Oct 26 2004 Leprechauns are creepy.-- Machiavelli, Oct 26 2004 How lucky are your charms [etherman]?
any luck lately?-- dentworth, Oct 26 2004 FA mate FA.-- etherman, Oct 26 2004 mmmm.....it seems my 'backboneless' and 'misanthropic', sans-anno fishbone has attracted comment, let me explain!!
The ends of rainbows can never be found in nature, and it seems to me a bad lesson for children to delude them in this manner. The whole point of the fable is that there is never a pot of gold, that one should never chase ephemera. So first consideration was 'bad idea', though 'nice public object' = neutral.
Then turned thought to possible mechanism. The light source, Sol, does not maintain a fixed orientation to the prisms. So, unless you just want a very brief 'sweep' of a refracted beam once a day, the prism assembly must be made to track the Sun - enter great expense and maintenance costs.
The idea contained no explanation of any such mechanism, and talks about light 'flowing through mirrors' (magic?) and 'concentrated into a prismatic beam' (nonsense), so settled on (-) and am happy with that.
[backboneless misanthrope] 27 Oct 2004-- ConsulFlaminicus, Oct 27 2004 i disagree. one should learn to chase emphemara and not the materialistic. love, spirit, halfbakery - all intangible ideas we should spend more time on.-- benfrost, Oct 27 2004 I think this beam would be right to produce a rainbow at least once a day.
[Consul]. I did in fact see the end of a rainbow once. From my back porch the arch was not so high over head and came right down into the street at my neighbors' car. I imagine that rainbow was pretty small to anyone else's view. [edit] close and in my yard, like the garden hose effect.
*stamps feet* I did! I did! I did see the rainbow's end !*stamps feet*-- dentworth, Oct 27 2004 [dentworth] I believe you believe that, or remember that, and I love your contributions here....but that just isn't possible. See link for some rainbow optics basics.
I'm lucky enough to live in a place where rainbows, huge ones, and often double ones, are visible about twenty times a year from my front garden. It doesn't make them any less special that I know I could never reach the end of one. I can just appreciate them for what they are.
[edit] actually, using a garden hose, you can make small rainbows- so small that you can be physically very close to their (apparent) 'ends' --- but just try to move towards them.....-- ConsulFlaminicus, Oct 27 2004 I could never be a leprauchan, I have no arm strength. I can't even lift a skillet much less a pot of gold.-- k_sra, Oct 27 2004 [yabba], you say it best when you say nothing at all. : )
Oh and I added a bun.-- k_sra, Oct 27 2004 While you can't actually place a "rainbow end" in a physical location, as mentioned, you can arrange the optics of an area so that, if you stand in the appropriate location, the raibow *appears* to end in a specific spot. Which is good enough for me.-- 5th Earth, Oct 28 2004 <door opens> OK, if the prism is too expensive, how about this? Have jets positioned to mist so that the sun hits them at regular (or almost regular) intervals, like so many garden hoses? (Hi, everyone! I missed you!)-- spacecadet, Oct 30 2004 [consul] - I envisaged the builders of this scuplture would soon give up on the huge prism idea and opt for an array of misters on top of the building, 'like so many garden hoses' as Mr. Cadet put it so nicely. I bunned the concept of a permanently installed rainbow, bad science notwithstanding. Sorry if I called you a misanthrope!-- wagster, Oct 30 2004 No offense taken [wagster] and welcome back [spacecadet]. To summarize the science, it wouldn't be possible to have a true 'rainbow' hitting a pot sculpture, unless there was a single, fixed, viewing point.
It may be possible to have a refracted beam directed at a point, travelling through some medium (a fogger?) to make it visible in daylight, that is visible from any angle, and that's what this idea is about.
A suggested modification would be to have a true rainbow created as a sculpture like this: Have a single window, looking out onto an expanse of lawn or flowers - directly above the window is an extraordinarily powerful lamp - suspended above the garden, and out of the line of site of the observer, is a string of thousands of mist nozzles delivering a curtain of mist about 50 metres from the viewer- the system would create true rainbows, visible from the window, and the rainbow would always appear to hit the ground in the same spot - it should be possible to position a large pot there, with leprechaun attendants.
Most halfbakers would revel in this, while us pedants and scientists could stand at the back tut tutting and pedanting.-- ConsulFlaminicus, Oct 30 2004 so [Consul] you conceed I could have seen the "end" of what appeared to me to be a nature produced rainbow?, when it was probably a product of the local mists and sunlight? (which sounds like a true rainbow, afterall)-- dentworth, Oct 30 2004 [dentworth] I never said you didn't see the end of a rainbow - I've seen plenty myself, because my house faces into a westward-facing hill, across a valley, and I see the ends hitting my neighbours' houses all the time. Your original anno described the rainbow being overhead and coming right down into the street - you can never see a rainbow 'overhead'. And my (oft repeated) point is that if you moved slightly toward the 'end' that you see, then the 'end' will move slightly away.
Nobody, but nobody, has ever seen the same rainbow as any other person. They are as individual as snowdrops (but for a different reason!)-- ConsulFlaminicus, Oct 30 2004 got it, at this point it is just nit picking between thee and me, but I did say high overhead, and on reflection changed to "not so". It was about roof height and down to the street, so it was a local effect.-- dentworth, Oct 30 2004 Could just paint the St. Louis arch in a full spectrum of colors.
But misters would work to I guess.-- MrDaliLlama, Oct 30 2004 random, halfbakery