Cursing the dice?

[tuftears]

It's true, those dice really do roll ones more often.

Food for thought!

Comments

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Hmm, a hollow in the middle? Is plastic really that expensive? >_>

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

It's probably more a case of equipment that *absolutely never* produces voids being expensive. Any entrained gas from melting/mixing the plastic will do it. At least, that's my best guess.

Still plotting kytteny tomography };>. The cheapest way to do it is probably to discharge a known amount of charge across a 10-20 kV spark gap (with a separation of a few mm or less, so that you strike a stable arc quickly), and put as big a CMOS image sensor as you can on the other side of the die. A CCD sensor will give you lower noise, but would be more expensive. Both will pick up x-ray photons just fine, and your gap is close to a point source if you use a needle as a cathode and have a rounded anode (so there's a tiny spot that's closest, rather than a wide area). The anode has to be fairly thin (1 mm or less if you're doing tomography of 1 cm dice). Add a not-too-imprecise way to reposition the die, and you're there.

[a-thompson.livejournal.com]

Awww, heck! Just use clear plastic, throw out the dice with bubbles, and be done with it!

Actually, this gets me wondering about the quality control casinos impose on their dice suppliers? I understand they're pretty strict about cards...

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much how casino dice work, yes. The linked article has details about this and other things they do, and a link to a vendor for them.