Purple-shaded glasses to spot garden trouble in advance
Clean Air Gardening sells this purple-tinted glasses that are supposed to help you identify unhealthy, chlorophyll-deficient plants before it's too late.
LinkThe lenses block out the green reflected by chlorophyll in the healthy areas of your lawn and garden, causing those areas to show as black or gray. Any unhealthy spots, deficient in chlorophyll, will show up as pink, red or coral colors. It's the plant equivalent of full-body MRIs that detect problems before their symptoms surface.
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would these work?
http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Infrared-Goggles!-For-Under-%2410/
Working link?
Link works for me.
They look fly too!
I don't think infrared would give you the same effect as looking through purple tinted lenses. It would probably do *something*, but looking at things in a certain light would likely have a different effect than looking at the same items through lenses of the same shade.
I would much prefer glasses that filter out ads.
Those IR goggles would work great. Scientists use IR to monitor the health of forests through remote sensing. Actually, so do some beetles who like to chow down on dead wood.
what I really, really want;
http://www.flirthermography.com/cameras/camera/1113/
....I only REALLY need one kidney....
How exactly did they define "affordable"?
and i still have a bunch of dark green pens from the 80s that were supposed to make CDs sound better. i'm selling them cheap, if anyone wants one. or some. or all of them.
I think I got a pair like these on Venice beach back in '89
This looks like pseudoscience to me - googling "plant examining glasses" turns up lots of places to buy them, but no NASA or Dept. of Ag. hits. Hmmmm.
...so why not try searching nasa.gov and usda.gov? OK, I'll try out their respective advanced search options. First, "plant examining glasses". Nothing. Next, "plant examining". Nothing. How about "examining plant"? On NASA, that turns up 9 hits, none of which have to do with glasses. A typical example, "... and examining plant growth and changes in blood of long-duration spacefarers." On the USDA site, I get this for number of hits (on the phrase "plant examining") "1-10 of about 23". That is more ambiguous than I was expecting! And it will only show 13 results, because the "show similar results" link doesn't work. Oh well, still no glasses. Somehow I can't see buying a pair:)>
THEY LIVE!
The reference to NASA probably refers to basic lens technology developed in the 50s or 60s. How does "I don't understand how this works" translate to "This looks like pseudoscience"?
#7: These glasses are going to give you a view of the other end of the spectrum. The high reflection in the near IR is from physical structures in the leaf, not chlorophyll. Near IR photos of a live leaf and a dead one look pretty much the same.
My argument for plausibility is that nasa and the usda publicise the spinoffs their tech and research produce. This shows up in searches. Anyone can sell purple lenses and claim whatever they want - but to make it plausible they make claims that can be researched. My quickie research turns nothing up, so I call shenanigans.
BUT NO! My pseudoscience theory goes down in flames. Purple lenses can be used to gauge plant stress. Here's a link (with theatrical filter part numbers for DIY):
http://mvh.sr.unh.edu/mvhtools/psd_filters.htm
good research there Eustace
After all these years, there can't be very many things in our lives that NASA didn't have some input into, even if it was 50 years ago. They do a lot of basic science.
Purple sunglasses are a lot of fun in general. If you've never tried them, you might be surprised at how everything looks different, a bit like having a blacklight on the world. Street signs are nearly blindingly bright, as are the lines on the street.
I did a series of experiements of various colors of sunglasses after having eye surgery and suddenly being able to use "cheap" sunglasses. I had a pair of purple wraparounds that were a lot of fun. Green sunglasses were dangerous for driving because they made red traffic lights invisible.
They've jacked the price from $50 to $60 since being BoingBoing-ed, and B&H carries at least one of the filters mentioned at Eustace's link for under $10 shipped. Perhaps not pseudoscience, but still possibly a rip-off.
A NASA press release
I found a bunch of good information by searching Google for plant-stress detection glasses, including some less than $30 versions.
These could be a real source of inner conflict if one loved gardening and hated the Lakers...