What, you may ask, is an 'electron gun'? In the back of every computer monitor and color television, placed well behind the screen we see, are 3 electron guns. One is red, one is green, and one is blue. These electron guns are the mechanisms responsible for what we see on the screen. The image we see on the screen, in turn, is made up of hundreds of thousands of tiny 'picture elements', or "blocks" of color, called pixels. Each pixel, take note, consists of 3 vertical 'bars of light' - a red bar, a green bar, and a blue bar - colors that correspond to the colors of the 3 electron guns in back of the screen. To fill in a pixel with color, each electron gun illuminates each 'bar of light' to a specific degree of brightness. Afterward, the 'bars of light' combine to form a single color - much in the same way 3 different colors of paint, when mixed together, form a single color. The color produced is a color unique to the 3 bar brightnesses. An entire screen of filled in pixels is what we call an image. Take note that if we take the first letter of the 3 colors red, green, and blue - the 3 primary colors from which all other colors have their origin, we obtain the term "RGB": the system of color management just described.
Find a computer monitor or color television. Next, obtain a small cup half filled with water. Dip the tip of your pointing finger into the water. Remove your finger, leaving a single drop of water that locates itself at the tip of your finger. Lift your finger toward the monitor or television, and place the drop of water onto the glass screen. The glass 'grabs' the drop of water and pulls it toward the screen. Take your finger away from the screen. NOTE: in order for this procedure to work as it should, the drop of water must be placed on an area displaying a BRIGHT color. Once the drop of water is on the glass screen, we have established a "lens" through which we are to view the pixels behind the drop. To use the "lens", move your head up close to the screen, so that you are viewing the drop from about 2-3 inches away.
With your eyes focused on the drop, slowly shift your head from side to side so that your view of what's behind the drop is constantly changing, ensuring that you'll find the angle that will work best for you. What effect does the drop have on the light from the pixels behind it? The drop magnifies the light from the pixels behind it, allowing us to see the pixels in ways not previously possible! Compare the magnified pixels to other pixels not affected by the drop. What is the difference? Pixels viewed by the naked eye are viewed as the electron guns intended us to see them. Behind the "lens" formed by the drop, however, it is possible to see the 3 'bars of light' making up a pixel - the red, green, and blue elements whose individual brightnesses, under ordinary conditions, combine to form a single color! There should be no difficulty in finding these 3 bars. The drop of water, in magnifying the portion of the screen behind it, allows us to view the operation of computer monitors and color televisions as it occurs at as fundamental a level as possible.
Have you had a cavity filled at the dentist? Or at least some type of dental procedure in which the mouth had to be numbed? Surely everyone has. Remember how odd your cheek felt when numb? Guess what? There's a way to relive that experience without even having to go to the dentist! Obtain an apple. Cut it in half, and place one of the halves in the refridgerator. Allow the passage of 2-3 days of time. When the time is up, take out the apple half. The edible portion of the apple should now have a flesh-like consistency, exactly like that of a numb cheek! Try it yourself!
This procedure allows you to view up close a 3-dimensional reflection of your eye. First obtain a typical metal teaspoon. Place the teaspoon in the hand you normally use it with. We will refer to this hand as the 'spoon hand'. Hold shut the eye on the side of your face opposite to the side of your spoon hand. Rest the tip of the teaspoon on the inner corner of the eye on the side of your spoon hand. Move the tip of the handle of the spoon toward the ear on the side of your spoon hand so that the spoon extends at a 45 degree angle to your face - halfway between the nose and the eye. Swivel the spoon so that the curvature of the head of the spoon bulges away from the eye. You should now be able to detect a faint image of your eye. To locate your eye, blink a few times. By adjusting the position of the head of the spoon and blinking to verify adjustments, you should be able to obtain a view of the eye adequate enough to make visible the contour of the eyeball, or possibly even the white of the eye. If desired, aim a flashlight into the reflection to increase visibility.
We all know that staring is rude. How do you gain information about someone, though, if you can't look directly at them? Use a window! If you look around enough, chances are that you will find a window containing a reflection of the person you are trying to observe. The reason this works so well is that to everyone else, you appear to be doing nothing more than looking through a window - they aren't aware of the reflection you see!
When something occurs frequently enough within our daily lives, our minds tend to overlook what it is that is repetitious and act as if it didn't even exist. What would a good example be? As we all know, every few seconds we must inhale and exhale to satisfy our body's need for air. This doesn't exclude when we are talking. When talking, we must pause every few seconds to take a breath. The human mind, however, has trained itself to negate awareness of these pauses. The next time you're hearing someone give a lecture or speech, focus on the pause for breath that occurs every few seconds. In doing so you will find that your mind had been filtering out the pauses the whole time!
When we listen to music in the way we normally do our 'mental ear' gives equal attention to all notes of the music. This is in fact the typical way to listen to music - the way one would listen to music unless otherwise stated. There exists, however, a mental procedure that can give the task of listening to music new meaning. Just as it was stated that we 'filter out' pauses for breath during speech, it is possible to apply this same principle to the music we hear: it is possible to 'filter out' parts of the music so that our 'mental ear' hears only certain parts of the music. It is possible, for example, to 'filter out' the main melody of a song so that our awareness focuses only upon the background music. There is no way to describe in words how to do this - it must be self-taught. What does this ability to 'filter out' musical notes in a song tell us? It tells us that the human experience does not consist of senses alone - we are more than a camera or a microphone - we are modifiers and manipulators of the information we receive from the external world.
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