Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2023 January 30

= January 30 =

Zombie muscle
Philvoids (talk) 14:04, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Zombie muscle ... comments? .... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 06:23, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It's well referenced. Do you have an actual question? Comments about article content can be made on its talk page. Shantavira|feed me 09:23, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Giving this snippet of trivia a subsection (with a tabloid title!) of its own calls the notion of undue weight to mind. The terminology of "freshly killed muscle meat" is questionable – while the organism is dead, some of the tissue may still be alive (see e.g. Organ donation). --Lambiam 10:21, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Dichroic prism?
Hi, a quick question about the article Dichroic prism, which defines its topic as "a prism that splits light into two beams of differing wavelength (colour)", is illustrated by the image on the right, which is a featured picture. However, it looks to me like there are quite a few more colours than just two in this image. Can anyone explain this? I would have asked on the article talk page, but it doesn't seem like it's a well-watched article so don't know if I'd get an answer. Cheers &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 14:35, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The photographer is, who is more active on Commons at c:User_talk:XRay. DuncanHill (talk) 14:43, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * You can find a small explanation at the file page at Commons. ;-) --XRay (talk) 15:05, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * thanks for the response. The description at Commons says "To explain what is shown: The prism lies on a black cardboard with a rough surface to make the light visible. The light from a flashlight with white light is focused by a lens (telephoto lens) onto the prism from below (right), with a small part of the white light passing the prism." - is this what you're referring to? I'm still confused from this explanation, though, what would make it a dichroic prism. There are clearly more than two colours being emitted. Thanks &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 17:57, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It is an explanation of the creation of the image. It is not a physical experiment. In the center you can see the prism, whose description is dichroic prism. --XRay (talk) 18:35, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the term dichroic prism, but here's a photo I took of a color separation prism assembly I designed (for the Foveon Studio Camera). It has dichroic mirrors between the prism pieces, to reflect and transmit different wavelength bands. It looks to me like the "dichroic prism" has a variety of different dichroic mirrors on its external and internal surfaces. Dicklyon (talk) 10:49, 31 January 2023 (UTC)