Lasers are the cool and amazing light beams that make us excited. You can see them in a meeting room pointing to an object, or you can even play with them in your home. Lasers may seem pretty recent inventions, but they are with us for over half a century. The laser technology is not only cool but also, they are really useful in the field of science and technology. Below are five awesome things that the scientists can do with the lasers.
Optical Levitation: Lasers are powerful enough to levitate stuff. Photons that make up the light exert a force which is known as the radiation pressure. This pressure is so powerful that it can overcome the gravitational force to make an object levitate.
Optical Tweezers: The radiation pressure, as discussed above can be used to make optical tweezers to manipulate objects. The technology can affect objects as small as an atom.
Laser Cooling: Lasers can work as coolants too. Lasers are capable of cooling things down by reducing the momentum of atoms or molecules.
Fusion: The laser technology can recreate the environmental conditions which are found in the core of the Sun in the laboratory. Lasers can heat materials up to extremely high temperatures – about a million degrees. Atoms at these temperatures break down to form a soup of ions and electrons. Such a phenomenon causes fusion releasing a high amount of energy. This method can lead to clean power generation in huge amounts.
Image Biological Reactions: You can make little science movies with an x-ray laser. Having a very short wavelength, they can capture images of stuff as small as an individual atom. Lasers can take snapshot images of even molecular reactions very quickly. Such a method helps researchers learn biological reactions in detail.
Therefore, lasers have different uses and strengths, applicable for industrial purposes to medical profession bringing a broad scope of this technology.