What’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… Continue reading Amazing Laser Application 9: Fusion!
Category: Science
Amazing Laser Application 8: Holography!
What’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… Continue reading Amazing Laser Application 8: Holography!
Optics Quiz Answer
Around 470 people voted in yesterday’s optics quiz. I continue to be amazed at the power of radio button polls to bring people into the blog. As of early Friday morning, the correct answer is solidly in he lead– 63% of respondants have correctly replied that the image remains intact, but is half as bright.… Continue reading Optics Quiz Answer
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update
The pace has slowed, but there are still occasional sightings of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog in my Google vanity searches: It turns up on library blogs with some regularity. This particular one, from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater is nice because it’s not just a rewrite of the publicity copy I was really… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update
Optics Quiz: What Do You Get With Half a Lens?
I was starting to type up the next Laser Smackdown entry, when it occurred to me that this was a good point to talk about a neat little thing from optics. It further occurred to me that this would be a good poll/quiz topic, to see what people think before I give you the real… Continue reading Optics Quiz: What Do You Get With Half a Lens?
What’s Eating Our House?
A neighbor pointed out to me yesterday that there’s a big hole in our clapboard siding that was made by some sort of bird. This morning, I got a picture of the culprit: I’m not quite certain why the animal kingdom has decided to trash my stuff this year– insane jealousy of Emmy?– but I… Continue reading What’s Eating Our House?
Amazing Laser Application 7: Telecommunications!
What’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?”… Continue reading Amazing Laser Application 7: Telecommunications!
Dorky Poll: TV Technology
I won’t attempt to explain the chain of reasoning that led to this topic this morning. The poll itself doesn’t need much explanation, though: As any geek knows, the tv show(s) CSI: Descriptive Subtitle rely heavily on fake technologies. which of these would you most like to be real? Which imaginary technology from CSI would… Continue reading Dorky Poll: TV Technology
Poll: What Do Students Need to Learn About Technical Writing?
I am currently on a committee looking to set some standards for technical writing in the introductory engineering sequence (which means the first two terms of physics, as they constitute 50-67% of the classes common to all first-year engineers). One of our jobs is to come up with a list of skills that we want… Continue reading Poll: What Do Students Need to Learn About Technical Writing?
Measuring the Angular Momentum of Light
I’m teaching a junior/senior level elective this term on quantum mechanics. We’re using Townsend’s A Modern Approach to Quantum Mechanics, which starts with spin-1/2 and develops the whole theory in terms of state vectors and matrices. This is kind of an uneasy fit for me, as I’m very much a swashbuckling experimentalist, and not as… Continue reading Measuring the Angular Momentum of Light