“Controllable vortex display” by Tokuda, Suzuki, Nishimura, Tanikawa and Hirose

As proved by the FogScreen, an immaterial projection screen can give us the holographic-like image effect by it translucent property. However, we cannot yet let 2D projection images freely fly in direction with the conventional immaterial screen media. As our solution for this limit, we focus on the unusual stability property of vortex rings. A vortex ring is a clump of air with a doughnuts-shape. We can emit a vortex ring by giving sudden volume change in an air-chamber with a circular aperture. A vortex ring has so great transportability property that it can convey any small and light particle, such as smoke, fog, smell particle, hot or cold particle, acid particle, etc. Therefore, it can work as a flying immaterial image projection screen with the physical properties of the projected images as listed previously. If we give fast enough volume change in air-chamber, the vortex ring can become round screen without any hole at the center for a while so that we can see the whole part of a projected image.

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