Science in Laser technology

Its has always been fun to watch lasers in action. Remember the Jedis in Star Wars?Well lasers are actually nothing more than “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation”. Pick the first letter in that phrase from all the words and you get LASER.

A Laser is a beam of light which has many uses. Not the least of which is being helpful in non invasive surgery. Here the patient does not need to go under the conventional surgery using a scalpel, but a beam of light in laser form is used instead. Usually stones are operated using the laser method.

What you see coming towards you is a thin beam of light traveling in a line. This concentrated light can be used to do some fun science experiments. If you choose to use this thin beam of light through fluid you will see how it gets distorted. It is rather like passing sunlight through a prism and looking at the refractive index.

You can even use different lasers and see how the reflected light varies in each case. Get some different colored lasers and see which one bends the most. Or the least, either way you look at it. Record your findings in a journal. You can even expand this into a full fledged science fair project.

There are lots of fun things that you can do with lazers at home. Check out this article for more ideas. If you have some new ones of your own, feel free to share them with me.