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TV/Computer Screen Science – Part 1

January 13th, 2010
By Dave Mosher

Look at you, just looking at that cool flat screen of yours, reading this blog post.

Yes, you — who else?

Think about this: Pieces of light are shooting out of that screen, slowing down as they hit your eyeglasses/contacts/cornea/lens/vitreous humor, and ending their short-lived existence on a suicide mission into your retinal rod and cone cells — which create electrical signals that travel through your optic nerve and into your fleshy computer to comprehend this text.

Mind-blowing run-on sentences aside, what they heck are you really looking at? Where is that light really coming from? What is the material responsible in the screen? How does it all work? What is the meaning of life?

Let’s find out! But first, a fun guessing game.

Four images are below, and your mission is this: Identify which is  plasma, cathode ray tube (CRT), light-emitting diode (LED) and liquid crystal display (LCD).

Click to enlarge, and no cheating Google University students…

TV 1:television screen close-up

TV 2: television screen close-up

TV 3:television screen close-up

TV 4:television screen close-up

I’ll follow up in a new post, where we’ll dive into each  technology. Because they’re each amazing and surprisingly different, and all taken for granted (including by this guy).

Photos by Dave Mosher except last one, which is courtesy of stock.xchng

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Posted Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 11:49 pm. Filed under Photography, Technology. Follow responses to this post through the feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

  • http://www.kastawayblog.com EricT

    Here’s my guess and reasoning so that you know I didn’t just google it…

    TV1: Cathode Ray Tube – I think the cathode ray tube is a fancy name for the old school technology that requires a thicker set to hold the tubes and an old school rounded glass monitor. When I was younger, I investigated the pixels on the family Zenith and this is what they looked like up close.

    TV2: Plasma – These pixels look less rigid, amorphous even. I’m not sure if that’s how plasma TV’s really work (I doubt if the pixels are actually liquidy) but the lower resolution of pixels also leads me to believe that it is an older technology, so plasma fits the bill.

    TV3: Liquid Crystal Display – Higher pixel resolution and pixels of different sizes, to me this is obviously newer technology. I’m gonna say LCD by process of elimination.

    TV4: LED – I think the arrangement of the pixels looks newer than the old straight lines of the cathode ray tube. I guess I think this is LED just because when I think LED lights I think of little circles (like the redLED on my cell phone charger – only smaller)

  • http://davemosher.com Dave Mosher

    Eric, thou art only 50% correct… Look for the results tonight :)

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