Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> OK, so some people around here work with LCDs...
>
> We've got a laptop at work with a cracked screen. Around where the crack
> is, the pixels are all black. Which isn't surprising. Slightly more
> interesting is the red vertical lines that seem to extend vertically
> outwards from the cracks. Why red? Why every other pixel? Why vertical?
> I have no idea.
>
> What's weirder still is that close to the cracks, the dead pixels
> exhibit a curiously fractal pattern. It looks like some kind of weird
> pixellated plant growth or something. Does anybody have any idea why?
>
> (I've got photographs, but I'd have to find something that has Bluetooth
> in order to get them off my phone...)

At first, I was thinking it could be a moire effect, but...

"LCD stands for "liquid crystal display" and the liquid crystal inside a screen
is subject to different levels of current to change the amount of the backlight
that passes through. When a screen is cracked, this process breaks down and
incredible patterns emerge, as some sections of the goo is electrified and some
isn't." -- Wired UK

Fractal forums had something about it possibly being a form of Diffusion-Limited
Aggregation.  Something like a Lichtenberg Figure, maybe?

Diffusion-Limited Aggregation is a process whereby, particles undergoing a
random walk via Brownian motion, tend to cluster together.

It would make sense that the crack in the screen disrupts the even distribution
of electrons through the liquid crystal, and the result is that the distribution
becomes chaotic and the electrons go where other electrons have been.

I have no technical expertise with electronics, so this is the best idea I can
come up with.  I have nothing on the red lines.

Regards,
A.D.B.

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