It's a Laser!

By Alan

We all remember the fun scene from Toy Story about Buzz Lightyear bragging about his laser on his arm.

The word laser originally was the upper-case LASER, the acronym from Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. However, it’s a bit misleading, because it’s not just “light” that could come out, but nearly any kind of electromagnetic radiation. The “original” lasers were actually putting out microwaves.

Lasers can be very bright, they can be dim. They could be a single color (more singular than any other kind of light), and some lasers can be broad spectrum light (an interesting prospect).

We forget that lasers can do all kinds of things besides point forward and light something up.

It’s interesting that several brand new cool methods of using lasers have showed up in the news recently.

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