thermochromic liquid crystal

“The Mood Ring was invented in the late 1960’s by Marvin Wernick when he accompanied a doctor friend to a emergency nearby. When the doctor pulled out a strip of thermotropic material to gauge the child’s temperature by applying the strip directly to his forehead, jewelry designer Wernick knew he had the makings of a winning item.

Wernick encapsulated ovals of the material within clear glass cameos and glass domes set in brushed gold and silver ring settings. His signature “hang-tag” explained the ring’s amazing properties.”

The stone in a mood ring is either a hollow glass shell filled with thermotropic liquid crystals, or a clear glass stone sitting on top of a thin sheet of liquid crystals (see How LCDs Work for lots of details on liquid crystals). These liquid crystal molecules are very sensitive; they change position, or twist, according to changes in temperature. This change in molecular structure affects the wavelengths of light that are absorbed or reflected by the liquid crystals, resulting in an apparent change in the color of the stone. For example, as the temperature increases, the liquid crystal molecules twist slightly in one direction. This twist causes the liquid crystal substance to absorb more of the red and green portions of the visible light, and reflect the blue part. This causes the stone to appear dark blue. When the temperature decreases, the molecules begin to twist in the other direction, and reflect a different portion of the spectrum.

The inside of the ring conducts heat from your finger to the liquid crystals in the “stone.” The color green, which signifies “average” on the mood ring color scale, is calibrated to the surface temperature of a typical person, approximately 82 degrees Fahrenheit (28 degrees Celsius). If your surface temperature varies far enough from the norm, then the liquid crystals in the stone alter enough to cause a change in the color reflected. And if you take a mood ring off, it will normally change to black unless the ambient temperature is very high.

They are, of course, made out of different Metals- That is the Jewelry part of them. The Jewel part of “Mood Rings” & all types of “Mood Jewelry” is encased in a glass or sometimes a plastic dome, containing “Liquid Crystal”, which is the key ingrediant that does the color-changing. The molecules of the “Liquid Crystal” move/shift through temperature changes & thereby, reflect/refract light in various ways, thus causing the color-changes.

I am not sure what they are made of but they change color based on heat. It is a simple heat activated color change.

A mood ring is a ring which changes colour in response to body temperature, using a thermochromic liquid crystal. The mood ring is a form of biofeedback and supposedly indicates the temperament of the wearer, indicated by their temperature. Mood rings were a fad whose popularity peaked in the United States in the 1970s, and they are now seen as an icon of 1970s culture.

There are many different types of mood rings, and it generally depends on the manufacturer which mood the colors represent. The ring has however, also appeared as other forms of jewellery including in necklaces, earrings, and toerings. In present day, the finger rings and the earrings are the most popular.The Mood Ring was invented in the late 1960’s by Marvin Wernick when he accompanied a doctor friend to a emergency nearby. When the doctor pulled out a strip of thermotropic material to gauge the child’s temperature by applying the strip directly to his forehead, jewelry designer Wernick knew he had the makings of a winning item.

Wernick encapsulated ovals of the material within clear glass cameos and glass domes set in brushed gold and silver ring settings. His signature “hang-tag” explained the ring’s amazing properties.

While some attribute the invention of The Mood Ring to Joshua Reynolds, even Reynolds won’t take credit for it, as he’s aware that he, in fact, was one of the many to jump on the Mood Ring craze, copying a winning item.

Joshua Reynolds, heir to the Richard Joshua Reynolds tobacco fortune, reportedly invented the Thighmaster. Reynolds envisioned the mood rings as “portable biofeedback aids”, and managed to sell $1 million worth of them in a three month period in 1975 . Even so, Reynold’s company went bankrupt, a victim of a market flooded with imitations.

[edit] Workings of a mood ring

The stone in a mood ring is, essentially, thermotropic crystals covered or surrounded by glass. These crystals are very sensitive, and of the ring, and “twists” the crystals inside. The crystals then reflect different wavelengths of light, thereby changing the color of the ring.

Due to fluctuations in the making of mood rings by various companies, interpretation of mood ring colors are not universal. However, a certain standard is fairly prevalent, and is the only one commonly found in any form of documentation. This standard is based on the crystals being calibrated to have the color green reflected at 82 degrees Fahrenheit (27.7 degrees Celsius), which is the typical surface temperature of people. Variations of the actual “neutral temperature”, caused by differing surface temperatures among different people, as well as effects from outside temperatures, cause mood ring measurements to differ, and make their readouts rather unreliable.

* Black: Stressed, Tense or Feeling Harried

* Brown: Anxious, Nervous, Strained, Fearful

* Grey: Very Nervous or Anxious

* Amber: A Little Nervous or Anxious

* Green: Average Reading, Normal, Not Under Great Stress

* Blue-green: Emotionally Charged, Somewhat Relaxed

* Blue: Relaxed, At Ease, Calm, Lovable

* Dark Blue/Purple: Very Happy, In Love, Passionate, Romantic

Chemistry.About.com – Mood ring chemistry

When people are under stress, their skin capillaries may constrict, causing body surface temperature to drop. This is represented in the mood ring’s color phasing from the neutral green to amber, to grey, to black. Conversely, a passionate mood causes one’s capillaries to dilate, increasing blood flow, raising surface temperature. This is rendered in the mood ring by the color moving toward blue-green, blue, and then a darkened blue.

[edit] In popular culture

* A mood ring plays a key part in the 1991 movie My Girl.

* A fictional variation of the mood ring (the mood suit) features in the Duckman episode “From Bad to Worse”

* “Mood Ring” is a song by Paul Thorn from his 1999 album “Ain’t Love Strange”

* “Mood Rings” is a song by the Christian rock band Relient K, on their third album Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right…but Three Do, and it is about emotional girls and their unpredictability.

* R&B singer Mýa named her third CD Moodring because she felt that each song represented a different color.[citation needed]

* Skate-Gate, an episode of The Replacements, reveals that Dick Daring, Riley and Todd’s father, wears a mood ring.

* The episode of the TV series “Aladdin” titled “The Flawed Couple” features a villain that uses jewels known as “Mood Stones” which actually change the mood of the person wearing it.

* In the 2000 film An Extremely Goofy Movie, Goofy and his romantic interest, Silvia Marpole, bond over their matching seventies style mood rings.

* In an episode of Nickelodeon’s “KaBlam!”, Henry gives June a gift of a mood ring. Soon after, June’s ring turns red which represented anger in the show.

* On the Cartoon Network show Totally Spies an episode depicts Jerry’s past self using a gadget styled like a mood ring and called the “Mini-Nuke Mood Ring”, which fires a beam that explodes in a huge blast.

* The Television show Quantum Leap (Season 2, Episode 2: Disco Inferno), where Scott Bakula who plays the main character Samuel Beckett, is given a mood ring by a Tracy Devoe, a music producer on the set of the Movie in where Sam plays a stunt man named Chad Stone. He comments on the mood ring as “A Mood Ring, From the self-obsessed 70’s where everyone was getting in touch with their feelings”

They are all wrong… Now this is totally classified…They are made from rocks collected near nuclear test sights. Remember… TOP SECRET. Tell nobody.

Maybe it’s Magick

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