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What if you could only see the world in UV?

Name: What if you could only see the world in UV?
Description: Veritasium shows what the world looks like through a UV camera. It covers how pigments absorb UV, how fluorescence works, and how UV imaging reveals sunscreen effectiveness and skin damage.

Veritasium

92 videos recommended on HN

YouTube

2 HN users recommended this explainer2 months2019–2021 score 2

Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN recommends it as a cool, eye-opening look at the hidden ultraviolet world, especially in sunscreen and vitamin D threads.

Veritasium shows what the world looks like through a UV camera. It covers how pigments absorb UV, how fluorescence works, and how UV imaging reveals sunscreen effectiveness and skin damage.

“Veritasium has a video using a special UV setup, it's pretty cool” (HN, 2020)

2 recommendations · 1 citations · Explainers

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3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@rjf72 Feb 2019 Recommends

on HN thread Sunlight through glass does not provide Vitamin D

Mildly amusing related aside from this. Because of this, glass is completely opaque in the UV spectrum. Looking at the world in UV [1] is quite interesting! Such a reminder that how and what we experience of the world is so largely a product of our physiological composition. What is perfectly transparent to us would be a great hiding place from the perspective of something that only saw in UV. [1] - [this video]

Looking at the world in UV is quite interesting.

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@hrnnnnnn Aug 2020 Recommends

on HN thread Vitamin D, part 1: back to basics

You need fancy lenses to do UV photography. From wikipedia: "For UV photography it is necessary to use specially developed lenses having elements made from fused quartz or quartz and fluorite." Veritasium has a video using a special UV setup, it's pretty cool - [this video]

Uses a special UV camera setup.

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Citations, criticism and jokes

@tasty_freeze Aug 2021 Cites it

on HN thread The only skin care that works? science video response (2020)

I'm in my mid/late 50s, and had grandparents from Ireland, that is, I'm light skinned. As a kid my brothers and I would compete who could peel off the longest continuous strip of skin a day or two after going to the beach. Anyway, the skin on my exposed arms looks like "old man" skin -- lots of blotches, and more importantly not elastic. However, the skin that lives under my short sleeves is not only unblemished, it is as elastic as when I was a teenager. In short: yes, it will help against cosmetic damage as well as skin cancer. Bonus: the youtube channel veritasium did a video a few years ago where they use a UV filter on a camera to show (a) the effectiveness of sunscreen and (b) the damage which is visible in the UV years before it shows up in visible light. [this video]

UV filter camera shows sunscreen effectiveness and hidden skin damage.

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