The Infinite Flipbook
Imagine a flip book with a point drawn on each page of the book. On
each page, the point is drawn just next to where the point was
positioned on the preceding page. If the flip book was flipped very
quickly, the set of points would appear to move in a line. Now loop
the flip book around itself, so that there is an infinite number of
pages. The line would appear to draw itself again and again. Now, for
the final step, flip the pages of the flip book at an infinitely high
speed. Rather than the points appearing to move in a line, the line
itself would appear on the pages of the flip book.
insert Ari's scanned-in-homemade-dot-line flip book
hereLINKLINKLINK
What does Volume Imaging have to do with flip
books?
The imaginary infinitely-long, infinitely-fast flip book described
above makes a set of zero-dimensional figures (points) appear as a
1-dimensional figure (a line). In Swept Volume Imaging Techniques, or
SVIT's, for short, a similar technique is used to make a set of 2-D
images
Why SVIT's?
SVIT's are useful in a wide range of areas, because they can present,
to the naked eye, a three-dimensional set of information that is
constantly changing. Neither holograms, stereograms, nor anaglyphs
meet those requirements. SVIT's may one day be allow us to send 3-D
messages, so that the receiver of the message will actually see the
sender in three dimensions.
LINKLINKLINKinsert Star Wars clip here
They may also one day be used to represent a constantly changing set
of information, so that radar and sonar devices will be able to
represent their areas in three dimensions rather than two.