Mood rings! Lace! Neato paints! | October 5, 2001

Mood rings are just kind of funny. Here's a little survey of how they work. Turns out they're heat sensitive liquid crystals. And more about thermotropic liquid crystals.

You can find out more about thermotropic and phototropic paints at Interactive Colors, which sells wildly expensive screen and flexo inks, but will also send you a .25 lb (approx 1/32 gal.) sample in blue, red, or black if you ask them nicely. I will be getting my sample of screen ink in a few weeks and will report on the results later.

Also: Sylvia and I are looking at wiring textiles to do some sort of midterm project. And voila: some lace/knitting links:
The Lace Guild (check out "needle lace").

I think the idea is using speaker wire as a proximity sensor. Tom Igoe posted this link, but it doesn't work.