Question: why do you like lasers so much ?

Jess Wade answered on 15 Jun 2015:

Lasers are beyond cool. Their name is actually an acronym- it means Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. A bulb like the ones in our house emit white light, which contains all of the colours of the rainbow. Lasers only emit one colour of light and you can’t break it up into other colours. We make the laser into a tiny super powerful spot and then we can shine it super far without it spreading – have you ever played with a laser pointer?

In my experiments, we use different colours of lasers and shine them at different molecules. This gets the moelcules excited, and causes the electrons inside them to jump up to different energy levels, or shells. then we can tell what way the molecules are facing.

In every day life lasers are used in CD players. Songs on cDs are coded into little bumps on the surface of a disc. The laser then bounces off the bumps and reads the music like morse code. Even in the supermarket we use lasers to scan our groceries! Some lasers are so powerful they can pop balloons!

Why do I like lasers… because they are AWESOME!

So why do I like lasers so much