The spectrum of laser technologies available to hackers has gradually widened from basic gas lasers through CO2 tubes, diode lasers, and now fiber lasers. One of the newer entries is the MOPA laser, ...

One of the coolest things about physics is that the same basic concept can pop up in several seemingly unrelated things: say, a CD, the seed shrimp’s antennae, certain fossils in the Burgess shale, ...

A material that is capable of the “reverse diffraction” of light and that is inspired by butterfly wings has been made by researchers in the US. The structure combines features of the butterfly’s ...

Here’s a great picture from [Jelly & Marshmallows] that shows off the wild effects of melted chocolate poured onto a diffraction grating. A diffraction grating is a kind of optical component whose ...

A U.K.-Portuguese research group is proposing a new solar cell design based on diffraction gratings – optical components that split and diffract light into several beams. They claim this could lead to ...

Sunlight reaches the earth as white light, which is made up of all the rainbow colors. Rainbow colors are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. It is easy to remember them by using the ...

Spectrographs are important tools for studying many biological and chemical processes and substances, from pigments to plant growth and nucleic acids to pharmaceuticals, providing information about ...

Using a novel method, beams of laser light can be deflected using air alone. An invisible grating made only of air is not only immune to damage from the laser light, but it also preserves the original ...