Hence, perhaps, the animal prints prowling over the collection, first as a faint impression on the back of a white jacket, then as a more insistent pattern.
It is apparent that the load of 5 g leaves a faint impression without fracture, whereas the load of 1,000 g incurs an obvious crack which represents a brittle failure.
But thanks to new forensic tools, even tiny bits of an automobile, or a faint impression from a tire tread, can narrow the list of suspect vehicles.
This sort of "transient blindsight" suggests that many ordinary perceptual decisions – not necessarily motor – can be effectively taken when our sluggish conscious representation of the world is still a void or a faint impression.
Baby eels are another unusual offering, slender, white and about an inch long, with the faint impression of an eye at one end.
The fossil record is itself almost astonishingly replete, given what is required to preserve the faint impressions of fleeting life in dust and mud over millions of years.
In one triptych, dusk leaves only the faintest impression of windows on a wall that's turning from white to the palest gray, as if a fog were rolling in.
Jupiter through a telescope looks a lot like our full moon on a regular night, but you can see two brown cloud bands and the faintest impression of the Great Red Spot (though that may have been wishful thinking on my part).
(Is there any other kind?) Ms. Rudolph, who was a brilliant celebrity impersonator on "Saturday Night Live," is funny when she uses her voice and hand gestures in just the faintest impression of Oprah Winfrey, but she doesn't have as much good material as she deserves.
"On the back of Page 2, we see the intimation of a hand print, a very faint impression we didn't know was there before," Ms. Ritzenthaler said.
