Ever print out an article because it’s too hard to read the entire thing on screen? Would you like to be able to read your articles on one piece of paper that can just magically change its ink? This does exist, and it’s called e-ink.
e-ink is as thin as a sheet of paper and it’s embedded with millions of tiny balls. Each of these balls has one side that is white, the other is black. The sheet they are embedded in has an electronic charge that tells the balls which way to face. So with one push of a button all the balls can line up to form an article. Or a black/white photograph. Since they don’t emit light, they are easy to read. It’s literally like reading ink on paper.
Plus when you are reading an article, there is no energy used to keep it on, because the balls just sit in their spot. The only energy used is to change the balls position–like when you change pages. There’s a lot of stuff this e-ink can be used for and tomorrow I will cover the new ebook reading device called the Sony Librie.
I can’t get my brain around this concept!
wow!
i saw this at the museum of science and industry a while back, its really cool. before you know it we will be reading (or watching) animated newspapers.
they say it’s four years off until it reaches total mainstream.
oh, hi
Animated newspapers like in Minority Report!
well, e-ink won’t quite be used for animations. The balls only have so much electrical charge, so they can’t be flipped that many times for animation. Plus the animation would require electricity to sustain the action–thereby cutting out one of the main features of e-ink–the fact that you dont’ need much elecctricy to display the images.
I think the technology for animated newspapers isn’t too far off [a la Minority Report”> and I don’t think it will require using electricity in the way we do now: plugs. But still, for some reason I have a better time getting my thoughts around something that doesn’t exist than I do with e-ink which does exist! Am I just stupid?