The Laser

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Term Paper Title	The Laser
# of Words	936
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	3.74

The Laser

The Laser

     Before we can learn about the laser we need to know a little bit about
light (since that is what a laser is made of). Light from our sun, or from an
electric bulb, is called white light. It is really a mixture of all the
different colours of light. The colours range from violet, indigo, and blue, to
green, yellow, orange, and red. These make up the visible part of the
electromagnetic spectrum. Light is made up of particles, called PHOTONS, which
travel in waves. The difference in the colour depends on the wavelength of the
light. Violet light has the shortest wavelength while red has the longest. There
are other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum which includes infra-red, radar,
television radio and micro- waves (past red on the spectrum), and on the other
end of the spectrum are the other invisible radiations, ultra- violet, X rays,
micro waves and gamma rays. The wavelength of the light is important to the
subject of the laser. A laser is made up of COHERENT light, a special kind of
light in which the wavelengths of the light are all the same length, and the
crests of these waves are all lined up, or in PHASE.  The word Laser is an
acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. What does
that mean? Basically a laser is a device which produces and then amplifies light
waves and concentrates them into an intense penetrating beam.

     The principles of the laser (and it's cousin the maser) were established
long before these devices were successfully developed. In 1916 Albert Einstein
proposed stimulated emission, and other fundamental ideas were discussed by V.A.
Fabrikant in 1940. These ideas, followed by decades of intensive development of
microwave technology set the stage for the first maser (a laser made up of
micro-waves), and this in turn helped to produce more advances in this area of
science. These efforts cumulated in July 1960 when Theodore H. Maiman announced
the generation of a pulse of coherent red light by means of a ruby crystal-- the
first laser.

     Laser light is produced by pumping some form of energy, such as light, from
a flash tube (see below) into a LASING material, also known as a medium. Media
can be liquids, solids, gases, or a mixture of gases, such as the common helium-
neon laser (see chart). Each medium produces a laser with a different wavelength
and therefore each medium produces different coloured light. When the energy, in
this case photons  (light particles) enter t...

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