• Question: What is fibre optic cable made of?

    Asked by scienceboyz to Andy on 22 Jan 2015.
    • Photo: Andy Hearn

      Andy Hearn answered on 22 Jan 2015:

      They’re tubes that you can see right through, but wrapped with very reflective material, like mirrors, so light is bounced against the sides along the cable.

      Light travels way faster than anything else, so they’re excellent!

      This picture (via wikipedia) shows this the best:

      Two or more fibre optic cables are joined by something called a ‘signal repeater’ which converts the received light pulses and generates new light pulses out at the other end, so we can join them up to cover huge distances.

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