A hologram can be cut in half, and each part still carries the whole picture. That’s because a hologram is the record of a light wave, and the information in a wave is spread over all of the space it occupies.

— arcnets

— physics forums

When a photograph is cut in half, each piece shows half of the scene. When a hologram is cut in half, the whole scene can still be seen in each piece. This is because, whereas each point in a photograph only represents light scattered from a single point in the scene, each point on a holographic recording includes information about light scattered from every point in the scene. Think of viewing a street outside your house through a 4 ft x 4 ft window, and then through a 2 ft x 2 ft window. You can see all of the same things through the smaller window (by moving your head to change your viewing angle), but you can see more at once through the 4 ft window.

— Wikipedia on Holography

2012.03.30 Friday ACHK