First you start off with a conventional double-pane window commonly found in someone's residence and place between the panes of glass polarizing material. From my understanding, polarizing material (first produced my the polaroid comapny) is merely 2 sheets of finely perforated material, that when placed over one another in the correct position, becomes opaque. Now mount a photosensor somewhere on the window hardware, perhapse arround the frame or something. When the sensor detects a flash, or automobile headlights, a small motor augments the polarizing sheets to limit the amount of light or blackout the window so the intense light does not disturb the occupant of the room. For daytime, or long periods of light exposure, the window can adjust the light output for the interior of the window. Kind of like a dimmer-switch for a window during the daytime, and with an inside sensor, the light coming through the window could be modeerated to a constant output even as the sun goes down.

This came to me after being awakened during a late night electrical storm. If it wasn't for the lightning, I would have probably gotten a decent night's sleep.

--In a way similar to "Shade Glass" proposed by pitch but reactive to incoming light, and sensitive to the light passing through it
-- Letsbuildafort, Sep 11 2003

[letsbuildafort] tis only courteous to provide a link http://www.halfbake.../idea/Shade_20glass
shade glass by [pitch] [po, Oct 05 2004, last modified Oct 17 2004]

Two polarized panes will block incoming light if they are rotated correctly. For this idea to work, one of the panes would have to be rotated 90 degrees. This would require a round window, or section of window to work. Would also be difficult to create a sealed, noble gas-filled double pane design (unless you wanted 3 panes).
-- Cedar Park, Sep 12 2003


Thanks for the lesson, Park ... much appreciated

actually, I was thinking of the 2 polarizing sheets independent of the glass just between the panes ... but I suppose having a swank round,automated sunblocking window would be cool too
-- Letsbuildafort, Sep 12 2003


//2 sheets of finely perforated material, that when placed over one another in the correct position, becomes opaque.//
2 sheets of coarsely perforated material, such as fritted glass, should work just fine. The fritting pattern could be 5mm horizontal opaque stripes, with 4mm horizontal transparent gaps. One pane would slide vertically 4.5mm. This would allow variable overall translucency from 56% to 100% opaque. Different patterns would allow diffirent ranges of translucency. Or you could just use electrochromic glass.
-- Laughs Last, Sep 15 2003



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