For many of us, the most memorable bits of school chemistry classes were lessons where we ignited metal salts over a Bunsen burner to produce brightly coloured flames, from the lilac of potassium to the distinctive red of lithium. Now a group of chemists from Harvard University have found a way of using these colourful flames to transmit coded information.
Working in the lab of legendary chemist George Whitesides, Samuel Thomas III has developed the 'infofuse', a strip of flammable paper patterned with metal salts. As the strip burns, the metals change the colour of the flames, creating coded pulses of light that can be used to send messages. It's a vibrant, visual equivalent of Morse code and as a test-run, they used their infofuses to transmit the message, "LOOK MOM NO ELECTRICITY".
Thomas sees the infofuses as the first step toward a lightweight, self-powered form of communication that doesn't ...
