On Monday, ZDNet UK visited the Royal Society's annual Summer Science Exhibition, which brings together cutting-edge science and technology projects under way at British universities.
In one exhibit, academics from the University of St Andrews demonstrated various approaches to render objects invisible.
One method is to use materials with the same reflective properties as their background. To demonstrate this, the university researchers filled a container with a mixture of water and geometric shapes made of sodium polyacrylate. Because the reflectivity of sodium polyacrylate is the same as that of water, light does not bounce off an object made of the material when it is immersed in the liquid. Instead, it passes through the material and the water at the same rate, making the object nearly impossible to see.
While this technique is a helpful illustration of invisibility via reflectivity, it is impractical because to use it the object must be entirely composed of sodium polyacrylate, a spokesman for St Andrews conceded.
Photo credit: Jack Clark
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