Soap may have a future purpose beyond just getting the stink off your skin. It may in fact be used for the creation of transparent screens that are thinner than anything otherwise possible today. Now before you go thinking this is an April Fool's joke gone awry in July, here are the details of just how this is possible.
Created by Japanese scientists Yoichi Ochiai, Keisuke Toyoshima, and Alexis Oyama, the colloidal liquid bubble screen's membrane has images projected onto it, similar to a typical projector screen. Only this one's made of soap...and can break, but we'll get to that later.
Not only can the screen have images projected onto it, but ultrasonic sound waves emitted from a speaker can actually alter those projections, and can be made to give the image a rough or hazy appearance when appropriate, in stark contrast to any other screen which displays images in the same way.
"Typical screens will show every image the same way, but images should have different visual properties," Dr. Oyama told the BBC. "For example, a butterfly's wings should be reflective and a billiard ball should be smooth, and our transparent screen can change the reflection in real time to show different textures."
Several bubble screens can even be used simultaneously to create one large collective projection, which gives off the vibe of being truly 3-D. And though the screens can still burst like oh-so-many soap bubbles have, it's also possible for objects to pass right through them without doing so, thanks to the special colloids which are added to the soap mixture, making it stronger and more resilient than a typical soap bubble.
While the bubble screen doesn't appear to have any personal use potential at the moment, the developers see it as having value for artists or the like to show off their work in a way that is artistic in and of itself.
You can see descriptions, images, and videos of the bubble screen at the developer's blog.
