Canadian money is cooler than yours - Quantum-mechanically cool Diffraction Grating technology -

Canadian money is cooler than yours - Quantum-mechanically cool Diffraction Grating technology -  

Apparently, built into the transparent maple leaf design on our Canadian bills is a diffraction grating technology…

That when you shine a laser light through the maple leaf…

An encoded value of the bank note can be seen projected onto a blank surface.

For the $10 Steve used, it diffracted “$10, $10” around the central laser point.

And a $20 note would be encoded with “$20, $20” and so forth. Steve says if you want to try this at home and you are sans a laser, you can even use the Christmas lights on your tree.
The technology used in our money is called WinDOE®, a diffraction optical feature that forms an image when a specific light source passes through the feature. 

OK not exactly. But how randomly neat, eh?