I don’t know how to Google what I’m looking for. Maybe I can explain it, and your combined brainpower can help me refine my search terms?
A pane of glass that, when electrically energized somehow, changes colors / and or tints to some degree.
I think there was a scene in Iron Man where Tony Stark is waking up in his bedroom and his windows “untint” and he can see the ocean view. Is that a movie-style extension of a technology that exists? Or was it totally made up?
This seems to only make the glass turn a milky white color. I’m wondering about other colors, or a sunglasses style of tint, which this wiki article doesn’t describe.
I also wonder if anyone here understands this technology well enough to be able to tell me if you always change the opacity of the entire pane of glass, or if certain portions of it could be changed? Like a shape or something?
I have a ridiculously futuristic idea which hinges on the possibility of this technology existing and being manipulable to a degree that I can’t find evidence for … yet
I’ve welded before with the auto-darkening lenses and never put two and two together that hey, that’s electrochromic! And it’s exactly what I’m thinking of!
It is made with laminated glass. That is two panes bonded together with a plastic inner layer. The plastic inner layer has charged particles in it that when exposed to a magnetic field line up allowing light to pass through. Take away the field and the particles scatter in different orientations blocking the light. Depending on how the magnetic field is manipulated you can do fades or wipes allowing different effects. Gradual tinting or just tinting part of a pane for example. You can get this in different colors although I don’t think they have it so as to change colors, yet. Failure mode is the glass goes dark so you wouldn’t want to use it for windshields. It is rather expensive and hard to install. I have installed this glass in conference rooms before.
Well given what Glazer (which for those who don’t know is what you call a glass worker) says above about it failing to dark, I can only guess that there are numerous systems to prevent this as, in a plane, you’d want it to fail safe to clear. Other than that, the advantages are that the Capt can manually override each window’s setting to clear for takeoffs & landings. Plus it probably saves weight. Also gives the passengers a range of dimnesses rather than just all or nothing. And it’s high tech & neato looking!
