How I Wish Mood Rings Worked

Rachel Hoyt over at Rhyme Me a Smile is conducting some sort of Smiley Sociology Study which involves getting a broad cross-section of bloggers to write posts about mood rings.  It's like Gorillas in the Mist, but instead of gorillas and mist you have bloggers writing about novelty jewelery.  Afterwards, I imagine she'll tabulate her findings with lots of charts and graphs in her secret lab.  Then she'll take the results to the pentagon in a sealed envelope, so that they can figure out effective ways to use mood ring technology with soldiers in the field.  In other words, I don't have the slightest clue what any of this about.  However, I've always found mood rings to be somewhat interesting, so I figured I was up for the challenge.  I looked up some information to learn how mood rings work, and I was disappointed to learn that they work by nothing more mysterious than skin temperature.  Basically, it's like someone took that thermometer sticker off the side of your fish tank and made a ring out of it.  No, this just wasn't going to cut it for me.  So I bring you my explanation of how mood rings ought to work, if the world were truly a place of magic and wonder. 

In Ancient Egypt around 1438 B.C. some workers were digging in a rock quarry in the Nile basin when they discovered an odd looking rock crystal, a crystal which we know today as "morphite".  As it lay, the rock was black, but when the worker picked it up, he found that it turned a bright green.  The worker stood there mystified, staring at it, until another worker snatched it from his hand.  To the surprise of both men, the rock now turned blue.  Yet another worker came up and grabbed the rock from the other two men.  In his hand the rock now turned red.  The three men hurried to show their discovery to the slave master who was supervising the work at the quarry.  The slave master was quite impressed with the rock.  He quickly had the three workers executed, and then he posted guards around the spot where the rock crystal had been discovered.  At night the rocks were mined in secret, and taken by the cart load back to the Pharaoh's palace.

These rock crystals became known as "telling stones", and they were originally used primarily in court proceedings.  The accused would be brought before the Pharaoh and questioned with the telling stone in his right hand and his left hand raised.  If the stone turned a certain color at any time during the trial, the accused would immediately be taken away for execution.  It is from this ancient practice that the practice in modern court rooms of "swearing in" descended.  The telling stones long outlasted the ancient Egyptian dynasties.  In the middle ages, they were used by knights to locate the lair of dragons.  It was believed that the stone would turn a certain color in the proximity of a dragon, but in reality it was only registering the knight's increasing fear as he thought he was approaching a dragon's lair.  Finally, in 1884 H.M. Clausterfield had the idea of making jewelery out of the crystals and he coined the term "mood ring".  He placed a few dozen in the display window of his Manhattan shop, and they quickly became a sensation.   

But how do these "telling stones" work?  To answer this question requires a certain basic knowledge of brain bio-chemistry.  You see, the brain operates by generating a Neurological Electrical Resonance Field, or NERF for short.  It is this field which gives us the experience of consciousness or the mind.  Think of the brain as being like a television.  By itself it is just a solid piece of hardware, but when you apply electricity it becomes able to display sounds and images on the screen.  The sounds and images are not a part of the TV.  They are an ethereal construct who's existence is supported by the TV.  Likewise, the NERF is not a part of the brain and it can be no more found by the dissection of tissue than your favorite show can be found by disassembling the circuits and transistors of a TV.  The mind is just an electrical field, generated and maintained by the brain.

This field pulses at a variable frequency, depending on the mood and mental activity of the subject.  When the subject is in an agitated or distressed state, the field pulses at a very high frequency.  This is part of the body's natural defense mechanism.  The brain increases the energy output to the field in response to a sense of danger.  In this manner it compensates for the sense of danger by heightening mental acuity and alertness.  When the subject is in a relaxed and pacified stated, the field pulses at a much lower frequency, allowing the brain to preserve the chemicals it uses to generate the electrical energy for when it is needed. 

Naturally, these variations of frequency affect nerve impulses through-out the body.  There is an almost imperceptible vibration to the body that it is perfectly attenuated to this frequency.  The molecules of the body make tiny oscillations similar to the way a wine glass responds to sound waves.  Since this is a constant fact of our existence, we don't really notice it, but there is nowhere that this phenomenon is more acute than the epidermis.  As a result, the skin generates a separate field which is in tune with the NERF, known as the aura.  To certain highly sensitive individuals, this field is actually visible.  The light rays that pass near to the subject's body get distorted by this field, disrupting certain bands of the spectrum while accentuating others.  To our sensitive observer, it appears that there is a certain colored glow emanating from the subject.

This brings us to our mood ring.  You see, the color changing properties of the crystal, which captivated the fascination of people as far back as Ancient Egypt, are actually nothing more than an illusion.  In it's natural state, morphite is black in color.  In fact, morphite is always black in color.  It just has a coating on it's surface that is sensitive to the brain's electrical field in the same way as the human epidermis.  Actually, it's far more sensitive.  While the aura is only visible to certain people, the same effect can be seen by anyone who looks at a mood ring.  However, although the effect differs in degree, it is the same by nature.  The oscillation of the morphite's surface coating is simply distorting the spectrum of light rays in close proximity to the ring, making it appear as if it's turning different colors.  Often the effect lingers on the ring after the wearer has removed it, because the oscillation takes time to relax back into its normal equilibrium and return the ring to its normal black appearance.

Well, there you have it.  I realize now that I could have perhaps looked deeper into how brain chemistry actually affects skin temperature.  I suppose that could have been interesting.  But hey, what's done is done, and it is what is, and whatever.  I hope it brightened up your Sunday a little, at least.