Laser Smackdown
drorzel | May 3, 2010Voting has closed on the Laser Smackdown poll, with 772 people recording their opinion on the most amazing of the many things that have been done with lasers in the fifty years since the invention of the first working laser (see the Laserfest web site for more on the history and applications of lasers). The candidates in the traditional suspense-building reverse order:
Lunar laser ranging 22 votes
Cat toy/ dog toy/ laser light show 41 votes
Laser guide stars/ adaptive optics 46 votes
Holography 47 votes
Laser eye surgery 53 votes
Optical storage media (CD/DVD/Blu-Ray) 60 votes
Laser…
drorzel | May 2, 2010With over 700 votes cast in the Laser Smackdown poll in honor of the 50th anniversary of the laser, laser cooling has opened a commanding 20-vote lead in the race to be the Most Amazing Laser Application of All Time. If you prefer one of the other options, you have only six hours left to change the final outcome:
Which of the following is the most amazing application of a laser?Market Research
Voting will remain open until midnight, with the ultimate winner announced on Monday, May 3rd. So get reading, and get voting. One vote per computer per user, please-- this is Serious Science.
drorzel | April 30, 2010We're just over 600 votes in the Laser Smackdown poll in honor of the 50th anniversary of the laser, as of early Friday morning. I notice that it has moved off the front page of the blog, though, so here's another signal-boosting repost, just so we have as many votes as possible, to establish maximum scientific validity when we declare the winner the Most Amazing Laser Application of All Time
Which of the following is the most amazing application of a laser?Market Research
Voting will remain open until next Sunday, May 2, just two days from now, with the ultimate winner announced on Monday…
drorzel | April 26, 2010As of 1:45 Monday, 217 people have cast votes in the Laser Smackdown poll. That's not bad, but it's currently being handily beaten by the 271 people who have voted for a favorite system of units.
The nice thing about using actual poll services for this sort of thing, though, is that I can re-post the poll to boost signal a little. So, here it is again, a list of the twelve most amazing laser applications suggested by my wise and worldly readers, with links to short explanations of the pros and cons of each:
Which of the following is the most amazing application of a laser?Market Research…
drorzel | April 23, 2010In 1960, the first working laser was demonstrated, and promptly dubbed "a solution looking for a problem." In the ensuing fifty years, lasers have found lots of problems to solve, but there has been no consensus about which of the many amazing applications of lasers is the most amazing.
Now, in 2010, as we celebrate the anniversary of the laser, we finally have the technology to definitively answer the question: radio-button polls on the Internet!
Which of the following is the most amazing application of a laser?Market Research
Each of the choices above links to a post I wrote here giving…
drorzel | April 22, 2010What's the application? Producing artificial "stars" to serve as a reference for telescopes using adaptive optics to correct for atmospheric turbulence. This allows ground-based telescopes to produce images that are as good as those from the Hubble Space Telescope.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? "How can I make this giant telescope produce even more impressive pictures?"
How does it work?The basic problem with ground-based telescopes, as anyone who has ever looked at the stars or listened to nursery rhymes can tell you, is that stars "twinkle." They appear to fluctuate in brightness…
drorzel | April 21, 2010What's the application? An optical frequency comb is a short-duration pulsed laser whose output can be viewed as a regularly spaced series of different frequencies. If the pulses are short enough, this can span the entire visible spectrum, giving a "comb" of colored lines on a traditional spectrometer. This can be used for a wide variety of applications, from precision time standards to molecular spectroscopy to astronomy.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How do I compare this optical frequency standard to a microwave frequency standard?" 2) "How do I calibrate my spectrometer well…
drorzel | April 20, 2010What's the application? Using lasers to cut and/or cauterize tissue during surgical procedures, instead of the traditional very small very sharp knives.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How can we do surgery without touching the tissues being operated on?" 2) "How can I get rid of these annoying glasses/contact lenses?"
How does it work? First, you strap a device to your head that lets you shoot laser beams from your forehead, like one of the X-Men. then you use a magnifying glass to focus it to where it needs to be. Like so:
(I'm not sure exactly what sort of procedure that is,…
drorzel | April 19, 2010What's the application? The goal of laser ignition fusion experiments is to heat and compress a target to the point where the nuclei of the atoms making up the sample fuse together to form a new, heavier nucleus, releasing energy in the process. Nuclear fusion is, of course, what powers stars, and creating fusion in the laboratory has been the holy grail (well, a holy grail, at any rate) of nuclear physics research for the last sixty-plus years.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "Can we create fusion reactions in a laboratory setting on Earth?" 2) "How can we get more helium without…
drorzel | April 16, 2010What's the application? Holograms are images of objects that appear three-dimensional-- if you move your head as you look at a hologram, you will see the usual parallax effects, unlike a normal photograph, which is fixed. So, if your hologram includes one object that is partly behind another object, you can see around the obstruction by moving a bit to the side, just as you would if the original objects were in front of you.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How can we jazz up flat images and make them look more lifelike?" 2) "How can we make credit cards harder to copy?"
How does it…
drorzel | April 14, 2010What's the application? Telecommunications, namely, the sending of messages over very long distances by encoding them in light pulses which are sent over optical fibers.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? "How can we send large numbers of messages from one place to another more efficiently than with electrical pulses sent down copper wires?"
How does it work? The concept is dead simple: You take a signal and encode it in light-- this could be analog, like the SpectraSound demo LaserFest is selling, with higher intensity meaning higher signal, or it could be digital, with a bright pulse…
drorzel | April 12, 2010What's the application? LIGO stands for Laser Interferometer Graviitational Wave Observatory, because (astro)physicists feel free to drop inconvenient words when making up cute acronyms. This is an experiment to look for disturbances in space-time caused by massive objects, which would manifest as a slight stretching and compression of space itself.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "Can we directly observe the gravitational waves that are predicted by the equations of General Relativity?" 2) "Can we detect things like colliding black holes, because that would be awesome!"
How does it…
drorzel | April 12, 2010Several weeks ago, I announced a contest to determine the Most Amazing Laser Application. Personal issues interrupted this, but I want to finish it out in honor of LaserFest Here's the list of finalists, with links to those already written up:
Cat toy/ dog toy/ laser light show
Laser cooling/ BEC
Lunar laser ranging
Optical tweezers
Optical storage media (CD/DVD/Blu-Ray)
LIGO
Telecommunications
Holography
Laser ignited fusion
Laser eye surgery
Laser frequency comb/ spectroscopy
Laser guide stars/ adaptive optics
I'll be writing up LIGO shortly, and will try to finish the whole thing as soon…
drorzel | February 23, 2010What's the application? CD and DVD players use lasers to read (and in some cases write) digital information from convenient plastic disks.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How do we store a large amount of digital information in a convenient and stable fashion?" 2) "How do we make everybody buy the White Album a second time?"
How does it work? The optics at the core of a CD player are very simple, and illustrated in this graphic that I lifted from the excellent explanation at HyperPhysics:
Light from a diode laser is collimated and then focused down onto the surface of the CD. The…
drorzel | February 23, 2010A couple of weeks ago, I announced a contest to determine the Most Amazing Laser Application. What with one thing and another, this didn't get posted last week, but I don't intend to drop it completely, and will be finishing the series up in the next week or so. Here's the list of finalists, with links to those already written up:
Cat toy/ dog toy/ laser light show
Laser cooling/ BEC
Lunar laser ranging
Optical tweezers
Optical storage media (CD/DVD/Blu-Ray)
LIGO
Telecommunications
Holography
Laser ignited fusion
Laser eye surgery
Laser frequency comb/ spectroscopy
Laser guide stars/…
drorzel | February 12, 2010What's the application? Optical tweezers use focused light beams to trap small particles in the focus of the beam, and drag them around by moving the beam.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How do we move these tiny little things around without touching them?" 2) "How do we measure the forces exerted by biological molecules?" 3) "How do we tie knots in DNA strands?"
How does it work?The basic optical tweezer scheme uses a single beam of light focused down to a very small spot. If you take some small (mostly) transparent object and place it in the beam, it will feel a force pulling it…
drorzel | February 11, 2010What's the application? Measuring the distance from the Earth to the Moon by bouncing a laser off one of the retro-reflector arrays left there by the Apollo missions.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How does the distance from the Earth to the Moon vary over time due to things like tidal drag?" 2) "Does the strength of gravity change over time?" 3) "What can we do with a laser to really cheese off people who think the Moon landings were fake?"
How does it work? This concept is simplicity itself. You simply point a laser at the Moon, fire off a short pulse of light, and wait for it…
drorzel | February 10, 2010What's the application? Using lasers to reduce the speed of a sample of atoms, thereby reducing their temperature to a tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How can I make this sample of atoms move slowly enough to measure their properties very accurately?" 2) "How can I make this sample of atoms move slowly enough for their quantum wave-like character to become apparent?"
How does it work? I've written about laser cooling before, but the nickel version of the explanation is this: You can think of a beam of light as being made up of photons…
drorzel | February 8, 2010What's the application? The use of lasers to provide an entertaining light show for humans, dogs, or cats.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How will I entertain my dog or cat?"
2) "How can we distract people from the fact that Roger Daltrey has no voice left?"
Why are lasers essential? Lasers provide coherent beams of light, which remain small over very large distances, allowing you to project a small spot or a tight beam across a room, or even a football stadium.
Why is it cool? Duuuuude! Lasers, duuuuude!
Why isn't it cool enough? 1) It's fundamentally just a toy. 2) No amount…