  Very complex mirror. (External Sample)
Donald Barnhart used his Optica software, built using Mathematica, to design this beautiful custom-shaped mirror. It focuses the light emitted from a stream of droplets as they are hit by a laser beam in a cell sorting machine. (Yes, there are machines that sort individual cells, one at a time. The ones Donald works on are made by iCyt.)
Amazingly, the perfect mirrored surface was not polished to that mirror finish. It was cut with a high-speed diamond lathe of such astonishing perfection that the finish you see is how it came out of the lathe. If that doesn't move you nearly to tears, you have no appreciation for fine machining.
The blue color, incidentally, is from blue fabric suspended over the sample, not from any inherent color in the mirror.
Location: Donald Barnhart
Photographed: 30 October, 2008
Text Updated: 15 November, 2008
Size: 3"
Purity: 99%
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