Becoming invisible has often been the inspiration for many fiction stories. Think of the Invisible Man, the cloak of invisibility owned by Harry Potter or the baseball cap that makes Annabeth disappear. Being invisible and doing as you wish has been a desire that each of us has cherished at one point of time or the other. That is why scientists have also been working on this project to make it a reality.

At the University of Rochester scientists are working on a project which hopes to make cloaking something to make it invisible to the human eye a reality. There have been many high tech approaches to cloaking and the basic idea behind these is to take light and have it pass around something as if it isn’t there, often using high-tech or exotic materials, said John Howell, a professor of physics at the university.

However previous devices have used expensive and hard to get materials in their research. In this science project Professor Howell and graduate student Joseph Choi developed a combination of four standard lenses that keeps the object hidden as the viewer moves up to several degrees away from the optimal viewing position. Of course this science project is far from developing an item of clothing that you can wear and become invisible, but its ground breaking work all the same.