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by omnicurious on February 11th, 2007

omnicurious

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Why does grease or oil make paper more translucent?

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  • by canadianhelper on February 12th, 2007

    canadianhelper

    The paper transmits light because oil permeates the pores of the paper and index matches to the cellulose.

    You don’t get perfect transparency for various reasons: (1) Typical oil isn’t a perfect match for cellulose. (2) Typical paper contains not just cellulose but other junk. If you match to one, you can’t match to the other. (3) What’s worse is that the cellulose fibers are hollow and you’ll never get oil into the cores. Therefore there will always be some scattering off the cores.

    n optics and fiber optics, an index-matching material is a substance, usually a liquid, cement (adhesive), or gel, which has an index of refraction that closely approximates that of an optical element or fiber, and is used to reduce Fresnel reflection at the surface of the element.

    http://www.av8n.com/physics/white.htm
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index-matching_material
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_refraction
    http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/IndexofRefraction.html

    Comments

    • Don't know what you said, but it sure sounded right to me. +3

      JAMMco... its complicated...

      by JAMMco... its complicated... on February 12th, 2007

    • Thanks for the good answer. As it happens, I got pretty much the same answer from a scientist friend, but you amplified on it in interesting ways.

      omnicurious

      by omnicurious on February 13th, 2007

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