Penrose Unilluminable Room Is Impossible To Light

Action Lab's video is here: https://youtu.be/inMihNPjevM The sponsor is KiwiCo: Get 30% off ANY crate: kiwico.com/stevemould30

Nice to see a real life Penrose "room" rather than a simulation. Love how you always make tangible demonstrations rather than just explaining theory

Ha ha, great minds think alike. Great video!

I actually like when multiple creators cover the same topic. It gives different points of view and explanations so the subject is covered more broadly.

That explains the lighting issue with my Penrose bedroom. And I thought it would be fun with all those mirrors!

A part of me cried a little, when he drew the ellipse @2:49 and just before he finishes the knot disrupts the shape.😅I was totally mesmerized by the smoothness of the movement and then was suddenly reminded of the little problems of practical setup

This is why we use a (cross-sectionally) ellipse shaped reflective space for the pumping cavity in solid state lasers. The heart of a sold state laser is a crystal rod doped usually with neodymium erbium or ytterbium and the atoms in the rod are pumped by absorbing light emitted from a high intensity xenon/krypton flashlamp also in the shape of a rod situated at the second focal point opposite the laser rod inside the ellipse. Almost all the light from the lamp therefore goes into the laser rod.

I'd love to experience what a live size version of the room would do with sound. Like, you have dead spots but how hard would it be to locate sound that you can hear.

It would be really cool to have a full size completely legit room just like this but with multiple lights and switches wired so that any time you flipped a switch only one light would be illuminated. I could see this having a unique use in a museum or something to literally bring to light certain areas of a room for an interactive experience

Roger Penrose must be an amazing guy. He solved a mathematical problem, and instead of publishing the result in a paper, he turned it into a Christmas puzzle in a magazine.

The weirdest thing is to imagine you sitting in a dark spot of that room looking towards an illuminated wall, but still seeing nothing at all but darkness, despite that the wall is being illuminated. Hard to imagine, but don't forget those walls are mirrors, and they reflect light only in specific directions, they don't spread it randomly. However it's really hard to accept this thought. Maybe it's worth putting a camera into a bigger model, so we could see, how does it feel and looks like to be in such a room.

I’ve always wondered what it would be like inside that room. Like imagine walking around in the main open space of the room and if you cross an invisible line on the floor then everything suddenly goes pitch black

Don't stop yourself just because ActionLab did it! I would re-watch the same topic taught by a different teacher. You guys are both great!

Science YouTube has to be the best niche out there. I never know what I’m going to learn about each upload yet I’m never disappointed and this video is no different 💛🙏🏽

3:00 yes yes complete the elipse.. here it comes...... Arrrggghhhh Steve!! How could you!?!

I keep coming back to your videos because of your practical demonstrations. It helps me picture and understands that concepts you discuss in amazingly helpful ways, even if I've heard of the concept beforehand

I've seen a bunch of videos about this before, particularly that amazing Numberphile billiards example, but I knew I was clicking on this just because your demonstration was going to be so cool. Awesome work!

This is exactly the sort of detailed and nerdy breakdown of the room I was hungry for after that Action Lab video, so thanks so much for still publishing it!

It's crazy that both you and action lab had this same idea in such a short time span. It's like the invention of calculus

Man does it make me happy to see kids who are into these kinds of projects. I feel like it's so rare to see nowadays. You're doing a great job keeping curiosity and imagination alive in those little brains! Keep it up!