Hologram Essay

Holograms Toss a pebble in a pond -see the ripples? Now drop two pebbles close together. Look at what happens when the two sets of waves combine -you get a new wave! When a crest and a trough meet, they cancel out and the water goes flat. When two crests meet, they produce one, bigger crest. When two troughs collide, they make a single, deeper trough. Believe it or not, you've just found a key …

…One calculation holds that by using holograms, the U. S. Library of Congress could be stored in the space of a sugar cube. For now, holographic data storage remains little more than a fascinating idea because the materials needed to do the job haven't been invented yet. But it's clear that holograms, which author Isaac Asimov called 'the greatest advance in imaging since the eye' will continue to make waves in the world of science.