Talks to Watch

What if you could only see the world in UV?

5.6M views · Jul 21, 2018 · 11:13 · 2 HN recommenders · 3 mentions · discussed 2019–2021

Veritasium shows what the world looks like through a UV camera. It covers how pigments absorb UV, how fluorescence works, and how UV imaging reveals sunscreen effectiveness and skin damage.

Why Hacker News points people here: HN recommends it as a cool, eye-opening look at the hidden ultraviolet world, especially in sunscreen and vitamin D threads.

“Veritasium has a video using a special UV setup, it's pretty cool”HN comment, 2020

What Hacker News said 3

Recommendsrjf72Feb 2019

“Looking at the world in UV [1] is quite interesting!”

Looking at the world in UV is quite interesting.

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Mildly amusing related aside from this. Because of this, glass is completely opaque in the UV spectrum. Looking at the world in UV [1] is quite interesting! Such a reminder that how and what we experience of the world is so largely a product of our physiological composition. What is perfectly transparent to us would be a great hiding place from the perspective of something that only saw in UV. [1] - this video

in “Sunlight through glass does not provide Vitamin D” · view on HN
RecommendshrnnnnnnAug 2020

“Veritasium has a video using a special UV setup, it's pretty cool”

Uses a special UV camera setup.

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You need fancy lenses to do UV photography. From wikipedia: "For UV photography it is necessary to use specially developed lenses having elements made from fused quartz or quartz and fluorite." Veritasium has a video using a special UV setup, it's pretty cool - this video

in “Vitamin D, part 1: back to basics” · view on HN
Cites ittasty_freezeAug 2021

“they use a UV filter on a camera to show (a) the effectiveness of sunscreen”

UV filter camera shows sunscreen effectiveness and hidden skin damage.

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I'm in my mid/late 50s, and had grandparents from Ireland, that is, I'm light skinned. As a kid my brothers and I would compete who could peel off the longest continuous strip of skin a day or two after going to the beach. Anyway, the skin on my exposed arms looks like "old man" skin -- lots of blotches, and more importantly not elastic. However, the skin that lives under my short sleeves is not only unblemished, it is as elastic as when I was a teenager. In short: yes, it will help against cosmetic damage as well as skin cancer. Bonus: the youtube channel veritasium did a video a few years ago where they use a UV filter on a camera to show (a) the effectiveness of sunscreen and (b) the damage which is visible in the UV years before it shows up in visible light. this video

in “The only skin care that works? science video response (2020)” · view on HN