Someone in our household bought some novelty specs - they make any point of light, such as Christmas tree lights, look like reindeer.
Intrigued, and never having seen them before, I tried to find out how they work and it would seem they are diffraction gratings, which was my first thought.
It's a phenomenon in physics where light waves bend when passing through a series of narrow slits or lines, causing them to spread out and overlap. This creates interference patterns that can be perceived as colors and shapes depending on the arrangement of the slits and the wavelength of the light.
In the case of the reindeer and Christmas tree spectacles, the lenses are made of plastic with a specific pattern of micro-grooves etched onto them. These grooves act as tiny diffraction gratings, splitting the light from each point source (like a Christmas light) into different colours and spreading them out. The specific pattern of the grooves is designed to focus these diffracted colors into recognizable shapes like reindeer or trees on the wearer's retina.
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