Laptops in front of us are emanating a hidden aura that radiates out from its moving components; optical drive, hard drive and small motors. This creates an electromagnetic force field, which is invisible to our eyes.
A recent project performed by researchers from the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design is aiming to make the field visible to users. They created light paintings based on the force field emitted by laptops and the result is beautiful images with wisps of shiny aura that float above the machines.
The experiment uses an Android app and a smartphone with integrated magnetic sensors. This allows researchers to detect strength of the EMF at specific distance from the laptop. To capture the EMF coming out from the laptop, they would drag the smartphone slowly over the laptop. Researchers noted that electromagnetic field is particularly strong around traditional laptop HDDs, so powerful that they could occasionally paralyze the magnetic sensor.
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