paint

My first encounter with a Conic Shelter was in 2002 and while I cruising Black Rock City, the temporary Nevada city also known as The Burning Man Project. The soft, curved, contiguous wood canopy of the structure that I saw there had a remarkably organic feel when placed among the many shade tarps, parachutes and tents that make up the fleeting metropolis. The sound of fabric snapping in the blasts of strong desert wind is so common to playa life that the Conic Shelter was starkly quiet by comparison.

Rotation of microspheres in a vertically changing external magnetic field. The color is switched between on (blue) and off states. Video courtesy Yin lab, UC Riverside

In the future, signs will be instantly rewritable and walls will change color at the flip of a switch. A research team at the University of California at Riverside has created a new magnetically activated, instantly and reversibly color-changing material with potentially groundbreaking applications. The technology is based on that used by colorful birds, beetles, and butterflies: instead of static pigments, the material employs "structural color," which depends on the interference effects of light.

Dept.: Gray Matter
Element: Titanium
Project: Anodizing a titanium birdhouse
Cost: $75
Time: 2 hours
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