Gris's Journal

Words, words, words

It's amazing what context can do for understanding. Today we received a book I'd ordered for the library, and I got spam. (Yes, I know: woohoo.) I was browsing-- ahem-- checking the condition of the book when I ran across a term I *thought* I knew. And actually, I did, sort of, I just had a bad understanding of it.

I'd heard of a "Fresnel lens" (pronounced fray-NELL) from my theater friends in college, and I knew it was a type of spotlight. Without bothering to look it up (oh, shame!), I'd assumed it was a type of lens that focused light ( so you get this = instead of this < ). Well... sort of. You know those cheap plastic "magnifier pages," the ones with all the concentric circles inscribed into one side? Guess what? *That's* a Fresnel lens, too. A Fresnel lens, named for Augustin Jean Fresnel, is "a compound lens formed by placing around a central convex lens [concentric] rings of glass [or plastic] so curved as to have the same focus; used... for concentrating light in a particular direction." (Dictionary.com) They were originally designed for use in lighthouses, where being able to get a LARGE, thin lens to throw light far out to sea was more important than having a long focal length. And so, voila, spotlights. And car headlights. And lighthouses. And overhead projectors. And those little plastic flimsies that help you magnify text on a page. Cool, neh?

And as for the spam... occasionally I get semi-interesting spam. It doesn't make me want to open it any more than I open regular spam, but I sort of like the ones that string together random words from the dictionary for their subject lines. One contained a word I'd seen before, but only knew a rather, um, dated definition for. I'll let you guess for yourself which definition of lorica I already knew. ^_^