PhotoChromeleon: color-changing ink lets you customize
Rock new shoes everyday, or upgrade your phone case on a whim! Neat innovation out of MIT (extra points for a great name), via FastCompany:
The reprogrammable ink allows users to change an item’s color when exposed to UV rays. In this way, it functions like nature’s chameleon; the inanimate objects adapt to their surrounding environs, less for camouflage and more for continuity in design. The color-changing ink is a scientific mix of cyan, magenta, and yellow photochromic dyes, which are combined into a single, sprayable material. Each dye interacts with different light wavelengths differently, so the scientists activated and deactivated different color channels in the dye in order to control how they reveal themselves once painted onto an object’s surface.
