How can a "magic" mirror flash blind people?
My "magic" mirrors are purely technological and are only able to transmit light. More precisely, they can display the visible and infrared spectrums, and communicate via radio waves. They're basically glossy phone screens without any bezel.
Now, there are obvious uses to these, but there's one unorthodox trick, seen briefly during a fight scene. The heroes are in trouble, as their opponents are overpowered Mary Sues, so they use the "ultimate technique" of the mirror. They hold out their devices towards the enemy and simultaneously show an exploding flashbang, the video feed of which ends up blinding the assailants for five seconds.
To summarize, when in this mode, the mirrors can briefly produce (white) light, strong enough to flash-blind people for five seconds. This doesn't have any detrimental effect on the display, but is rather taxing for the battery and can't be done in rapid succession.
The concept is cool, but I'm struggling to find a display technology (like OLED or LCD), even if only experimental, that would be able to actually do what was defined in the criteria. Do you have any ideas on what display type would fit the bill?
To be clear, magic magic doesn't exist here, it's just another name for technology and science, and they're called mirrors not because they were designed to be those, but because they're very glossy and don't have any anti-glare coating.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/173542. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1 answer
I don't think a "display" can accomplish this... but if it's a feature intentionally built into the mirror (and not just an "accidental" misuse of what it could otherwise do), there are certainly LEDs bright enough for your purpose. Check out what gets used in tactical flashlights, or this video (which is using essentially the same LEDs that you would use in a tac-light, only more of them).
As you've already noticed, they eat power like crazy and generate quite a bit of heat also, but if you're only firing them for a second or so (of actual on time; note that strobing them is probably just as good), you're probably okay.
The trick will be getting enough of this sort of thing that can also shine through your graphical display elements, unless you can mount them some other way. In which case... like Curiosity's answer, you're basically trying to build a display with a fantastical peak brightness and contrast ratio.
(BTW, "HDR", at least for displays, is mostly marketing BS for having a high peak brightness and contrast ratio; measurements that have been around for much, much longer than "HDR".)
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