In shows like Numbers, House, and Pysch you see characters write on a clear glass pane with markers to talk about certain issues. Do people really use those in real life? I dont see how they would be that beneficial
I’ve used a mirror as a makeshift whiteboard before. Some folks might just do it because it’s fun/cool. Of course, with a mirror, you end up with a double image, since the dry erase marker is on top of the glass, and the reflective surface is beneath the glass, causing you to see the reflection of what you wrote anywhere where you aren’t looking straight down at it.
I’ve also heard that during Vietnam, Foward Air Controllers, pilots who flew over battlefields and called in air and artillery strikes, would sometimes use a wax pencil to take notes on their canopy to help keep track of who was coming in from where to blow up what and how they were going to do it. It’s important to know exactly what’s going on when you are dealing with explosive projectiles, fast moving jets, enemy weapons fire, and friendly troops, all in the same local arae.
The basic use for this is that there is something printed on paper underneath the clear whiteboard. This is something permanent, like the hospital ER positions & shifts, while the names of the staff assigned to those positions today is written on the clearboard. That part can be easily wiped off at the end of the day, and the next day’s assignments written in. But the stuff underneath is not erased, and stays there all the time.
Oh yeah, that reminds me, when I went to Texas A&M back in the day, the Corps of Cadets fashioned makeshift whiteboards out of sheet protectors and duck tape, sliding a copy of their class schedule into the sheet protector, and marking off their “Study Time” with a red marker. Their upperclassmen couldn’t train them during the study times, but they could check on them to make sure they were, you know, studying, and not playing World of Warcraft or whatever it is kids did to goof off in 2002 back before the Internet existed.
I’m relatively sure that the shows do it so they can get cool shots from behind the board, with the text hanging in air. (House has only done it once, that I noticed, and fortunately scrapped it.)
Unless you had something backing it, it’s very likely that the text would be largely invisible, either because it was dark behind the board, or because it gets hidden among the assorted items in the background.
In “A Beautiful Mind,” Nash was shown writing forumlas on the windows of the library, or maybe it was his dorm room. This must have been grease pencil because it was in pre-whiteboard days. No idea if the real Nash actually did that, or whether this was just for artistic effect in the movie.
I wrote on my hood during grad school all of the time. We needed to use solvents to clear it, but being an organic chemistry lab … This gave me information that I needed regularly right where I needed it. Also, it was a great way to brainstorm while I was doing something monotonous like chromatography. Unlike with whiteboards, the glass always wiped clean.
ETA Actually, it probably wasn’t glass.
Sharpie on glass is our default writing surface in the lab. Acetone takes it right off. I always assumed that the dedicated clear “white” boards used in television and movies were for visual effect. I base this assumption on the fact that most of the things depicted in laboratories in tv and movies aren’t realistic, either. (for starters, they’re seldom close to as clean or as pretty as on tv)
Military Combat Information Centers use clear boards with the writers writing backwards on the other side of the board.
Still? I know they did this during WWII and Korea, but don’t they have big TV screens to do that now?
Psyche characters write on their office window I think, not a special [del]white [/del]clear board.
I dunno what benefit you’d get from having someone write backwards on a big TV screen… 
We write on our windows/cubicle glass partitions with whiteboard markers all the time.
Depending on what’s outside / what time it is, you may want to choose a different marker so it’s more legible, but it works great when you’ve filled the whiteboard, or if the room doesn’t have one in the first place. The only downside I can think of is that if the glass gets dusty it does make it a bit more difficult to write on.
I can sorta see transparency being useful if you’re talking to people who may be behind the board… but it would be outweighed by the difficulty of reading the written text I’d say. No idea.
No idea. Now that you mention it my information is almost two decades old.