When we think about the most spectacular scientific inventions, the light bulb (Thomas Alva Edison), radioactivity (Marie Curie), or the aeroplane (Wright Brothers) usually come to mind. However, a critical yet often overlooked invention is the LASER; ironically, most of us don’t even know it is an acronym! LASER – Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation – is a technology capable of converting light waves into a focused, high-energy beam.
The science behind the laser is elementary: it is a ‘group’ of light waves with the same wavelengths with their peaks aligned, making it capable of producing very narrow and bright light beams that concentrate tremendous energy into one spot, unlike the spreading out of a flashlight. For the same reason, laser beams have the potential to travel extremely long distances, quite like how we see a water hose or a jet spray streamline water into a powerful, single beam.
Lasers have countless applications in our lives, so let’s review a few of them:
MEDICAL USES: Lasers, in medical applications, usually involve treatments of external body parts, such as eye or vision surgery (commonly known as the LASIK), dermatology (photodynamic therapy), and cosmetic treatments. Besides these, they are instrumental in hair and tattoo removal. Since lasers are narrow beams, they are often used to precisely cut tissues during surgeries since it causes minimal bleeding.
MANUFACTURING: Lasers are often used to aid manufacturing processes like cutting. Using lasers in manufacturing allows precise cutting of delicate structures without any extra pressure that mechanical blades and drills may cause. It also provides for the processing of materials without touching them, protecting the integrity of these products.
DATA STORAGE: Optical data storage – such as CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray Discs – rely primarily on laser sources to work, using low-power laser beams that record and read binary and digital data. It encodes the data onto the disk – as tiny pits in a spiral pattern – on its surface. A laser scanner is then used to retrieve the data by converting reflected light intensity from these pits into electrical signals.
METROLOGY: The science of measurements also depends on lasers for precise position measurements, long-distance navigation, and surface profiling (extracting topographical data). Laser scanners detect barcodes and other graphics from over a long distance by scanning the trajectory and course of laser beams. It also scans 3D objects, for example, in crime scene investigations.
And remember: this is just the tip of the iceberg! If we were to list all the areas ameliorated by lasers, even the immortal Phoenix would run out of time in reading it!
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