When I was ~10, I always assumed that the only way a laser would work is if the light gets reflected back and forth between to mirrors, amplifying the beam, and somehow magically passed through one of them and now that 5 years has gone by I finally feel enlightened about how this idea could possibly work.
@@pianoraves Thank you! I’m pretty close to getting a bachelors in aerospace engineering and I’m also researching how one would use phase differences between antennas to find the direction a signal is coming from. I hope things are going well for you too!
Smarter every day + minute physics + vsauce = youtubers getting really smart. I love all the collaboration I've been seeing lately - you guys are awesome!
Dude, I really feel like I actually get smarter from the stuff you make. You're pretty good at explaining it and showing it in a cool way. This is the kind of stuff I started watching Discovery for, before they kind of lost their way and started doing other weird shit.
Hey Destin, i think you should revisit this with some more detail and experimentation. Everyone loves lazors, but i feel this could have some more fascinating explanations and information added on. Just an idea bro!
How lasers work In a nutshell: Light bounces back and forth between two mirrors. The light intensifies between the mirrors. One of the mirrors has a tiny hole to leak out some of the photons.
@@bushelfootYeah, just like the capacitors for supplying sudden huge drawing amperes in various devices such as subwoofers or electric motors and so on👍🏻
@joeandbuzz Buzz (I know it's you). They're blue because they're made to filter out certain wavelengths of light. In this case, the wavelengths associated with a He-Ne laser.
It’s nice seeing this video again. I used a similar looking laser in community college a few years back to observe how different apertures affect the patterns that light forms on a wall from a known distance.
I work for a company who makes some of the equipment used in this video. So nice to see it in use. I'm lucky enough to have a job that requires me to use the equipment in our lab, but it's not quite the same as seeing a real world experiment using it.
+Connor Hill It's CRYSTAL CLEAR there is no hazard of this laser being shined "directly" in anyone's eyes and the scattered reflections from a 5mW laser are harmless. That was my point, Einstein.
The mirrors are "perfects", reflecting much better than those we use in bathroom. The shape is flat... a tiny bit concave to force any photon that was bouncing at an angle to get back in line. The is a tiny hole at the center of one mirror to let a small percentage of photons, such as 2%, to exit after having been reflected 50 time or more. This hole is the reason a laser emit a narrow beam of light. The beam diverge a little over large distance. The best laser firing at the moon get a beam a few miles wide. The air make it impossible anyway to keep a beam focussed. The laser "tsunami" from spectra physics create 10 pulses per second with light so intense that the air ionize, creating a super sonic boom on each pulse. It sounds like a whip slapping fast or lightning, which are example of white noise created by all frequencies meeting at the same time when the sound wave catchup with the air molecules, which moved above the speed of sound.
It's a region in The Netherlands. About in the middle on the east side bordering Germany. University of Twente in Enschede is (afaik) a pretty well-known technical university.
So it's my understanding that the light energy bounces back and forth between the two mirrors (one being just less reflective than the other) until the beam breaks through the less reflective mirror which results in beam emission. That tells me that there is a substantial energy loss. Most of the power remains inside the open cavity tube allowing only a lesser percentage of the power to escape. We have auto reactive welding masks the lenses of which are transparent until the goggles detect the higher light energy emitted by arc action. The lenses of the goggles automatically darken to protect the welders' eyes, then return to transparent once the more intense light ceases. Would there be any way to create an auto response mirrored surface that would react in similar fashion? With such a mirrored surface, the two mirrors (one being a stable full reflective mirror at the back end of the laser) could be made completely reflective until such time as beam emission was desired allowing for full power emission instead of partial.
Hey a cool video idea, so about a month ago I had my dad shine my 500mw green laser into the sky at night as I walked to the other side of the house to see if you can see the beam from the side and as I looked up it looks like they are shining the laser tilted towards you because I had no point of reference and because it shined miles into the air
Photon Torpedoes, Destin? While pointing at a Star Wars shirt? Unaxcceptable. But since I love your videos and I shall forgive you. Keep doing awesome things!
hi destin... every time i watch your video...it blows my mind... and learn new things from it... so i have this very weird thing that i hope you can explain why superman have this powers in our planet while they dont have that power in there own world...
Would it be possible to use some kind of shutter-type device, opening and closing extremely rapidly, to let more than 2% of the light escape, giving a brighter beam without having to have so much power consumption and heat inside the laser tube?
The other 98% is used for reflecting back and forth to build up the coherit light (some of which is lost of course). eventually each and every photon will get it's 2% chance to escape. It is sort of like a negative feedback loop: The more light the mirror reflects back into the chamber, the more it will build up, and ideally, the more photons there are to escape, but more photons + more reflectivity = same light output, I would think. In theory, the shutter would probably need to stay closed for a few milliseconds to build up the beam, then it opens to optically 'discharge' that buildup, then close quickly again to build up the photons again. This will result in bursts of LOTS of laserlight, but for such a brief period of time (nanoseconds?) then the light would have to build up again for a few milliseconds. In practice, the shutter will need to have a mirrored surface that is very well adjusted, but I'd imagine it would 'shake' loose quickly, and idealistically offers no advantage other than standard pulsed gas laser. You just have to remember that other 98% of light not allowed to escape is basically stored up for later use, and the majority of laserlight will escape.
Good points. I was just thinking (after your reaply) maybe using glass with a chemically-reactive "tint" sandwiched between 2 layers that can change states from tinted-to-clear in a matter of nanoseconds, that is constantly changing state, much like "Active 3D glasses" do. I dunno, this type of physics is over my head. Lasers are COOL, that's about all I know about them!
Yeah. I think you are thinking of LCD technology. I wonder how solid state lasers work, what was shogun in the video was just for gas discharge tubes...
Have a look into cavity dumping, it's a method to generate short pulses. Average output won't increase. Q-switching is the other way around, actually stoppping lasing to let the population inversion grow before opening the "shutter", creating one huge pulse because of the stored energy.
This video is relevant for sections 15.1 and 15.2 in the book "Fundamentals Of Photonics, Second Edition" in my course "Optics & Photonics" at LTU in Sweden. I am pointing that out here as a reminder in case I forget, lolz.
I always thought that lasers worked by pushing energy into atoms inside a semi-silvered capsule to the point that the outermost electron becomes excited to the point that it jumps out to the next electron shell, then immediately releasing the excess energy by releasing a photon and falling back into its original electron shell. I thought that these photons bounced around in all directions in the semi-silvered capsule until they met the semi-silvered end caps of the capsule at the correct angle so that the photons could pass through, to create a laser beam.
It's mainly because of regressive voice assimilation and other small articulation thingamawuts that occur naturally in Hollandic Dutch and they then transfer to their English
This may have been pointed out before but the caption titles for "what Johan is saying" and "what Destin thinks he is saying" are mixed up. The funny version is under "what Destin thinks he is saying".
Minute Physics named it's laser video "How Lasers Work (In Theory)" and linked to this. Destin named this video "How Lasers Work (In Practice)" and linked to the Henry's video.
So here you said you have 2% of the light going out of the mirror and 98% reflecting back; is there an optimal "imperfection" for the mirror to have the strongest laser with only changing the mirror?
I (as a Dutch person) notice that this person can be from the Netherlands, and in some cases it turns out it was someone from Belgium. But I find it hard to notice instantly, luckily there are other ways to find out about it.
When I was ~10, I always assumed that the only way a laser would work is if the light gets reflected back and forth between to mirrors, amplifying the beam, and somehow magically passed through one of them and now that 5 years has gone by I finally feel enlightened about how this idea could possibly work.
Yoo this is an old comment I hope you're doing well and still having a thriving interest in stem
@@pianoraves Thank you! I’m pretty close to getting a bachelors in aerospace engineering and I’m also researching how one would use phase differences between antennas to find the direction a signal is coming from.
I hope things are going well for you too!
I used to think that there was a small hole for some of the light to leak away instead of partially transparent mirror.
Bro this is the way actually lasers work
Smarter every day + minute physics + vsauce = youtubers getting really smart. I love all the collaboration I've been seeing lately - you guys are awesome!
Dude, I really feel like I actually get smarter from the stuff you make. You're pretty good at explaining it and showing it in a cool way. This is the kind of stuff I started watching Discovery for, before they kind of lost their way and started doing other weird shit.
Hey Destin, i think you should revisit this with some more detail and experimentation. Everyone loves lazors, but i feel this could have some more fascinating explanations and information added on. Just an idea bro!
+SoloFlightProd agreed
What a nice guy in nice to hear him telling peeps to go to school
How lasers work In a nutshell: Light bounces back and forth between two mirrors. The light intensifies between the mirrors. One of the mirrors has a tiny hole to leak out some of the photons.
Laser resonater helps to populate the photons making the light more powerful.
I wonder if this is enough of a summation for my HeNe laser prac report 🤣
@@bushelfootYeah, just like the capacitors for supplying sudden huge drawing amperes in various devices such as subwoofers or electric motors and so on👍🏻
I was just studying about He-Ne lasers, thanks for the great video!
@joeandbuzz
Buzz (I know it's you). They're blue because they're made to filter out certain wavelengths of light. In this case, the wavelengths associated with a He-Ne laser.
leuk om te horen dat deze nederlander ook zo`n leuk engels/nederlands accent heeft
Weet Ik
dat heeft bijna elke nederlander :)
Ja. Dat is zegmaar ons ding. Om een engels/nederlands accent te hebben. Je kan makkelijk horen dat hij nederlands is.
Ishij nederlands ?
Ja
I'm Dutch myself and I was surprised this was in The Netherlands :D I follow your videos for months and you're getting me smarter every time :)
How´s life now?
Pretty good actually! I still follow this channel. Never thought I would get a comment 11 years later hahaha
but photon torpedoes aren't from star wars
They are from star trek right?
Star Wars has proton torpedoes.
Nothing beats an anal torpedo.
+PisaniProductions Nothing beats emptying an otherwise useful torpedo just to throw Spock's body onto a planet.
I was waiting for somebody else to notice this...
It’s nice seeing this video again. I used a similar looking laser in community college a few years back to observe how different apertures affect the patterns that light forms on a wall from a known distance.
Duurt lang met die torpedo's Johan!
Peter Timowreef Johan pakt jou
Dylan Koster
"pakt mij"..? Gaatie me tjoepen met een niefa zeker.
ah, geef het nog een paar jaar :p
ja egty he xD
Peter Timowreef vnbjvnhhjufye
I always feel happy after watching your videos
"In fact, they're weapons from star trek, not star wars." he must've been kidding.
I live in the Netherlands!
And I can't tell you how glad I am you din't call it Holland!
Thanks!
Destin, Love everything about your channel. I use your videos in homeschooling my kids. Keep up the great work.
Matthew Richardson Wow 😁
We basically knew everything you talked about in that video already but we liked seeing that you knew it. Awesome Destin!
Hi Destin. I watch all your videos and some of them are really good. For this video I was hoping to get some detailed explanation about lazers.
Hey I really like the way you are linking your videos with other people who also are good at explaining these things to us!
-did you call me something
-nee
xD
I work for a company who makes some of the equipment used in this video. So nice to see it in use. I'm lucky enough to have a job that requires me to use the equipment in our lab, but it's not quite the same as seeing a real world experiment using it.
is it named after a Norse god by any chance
Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
I learned that while playing a Kirby game. :D
You beat me to it. Time we bring smarts back en vogue.
I love it. Wearing safety glasses for a helium neon laser less powerfull than a modern dollar store 5mW laser pointer.
+Connor Hill It's CRYSTAL CLEAR there is no hazard of this laser being shined "directly" in anyone's eyes and the scattered reflections from a 5mW laser are harmless. That was my point, Einstein.
Ok, I'm a bit late, but you, sir just got ROASTED!!!
And Connor Hill, You really know how to sentence an argument. Well done.
HIS NAME IS NOT JOHAN. HE IS THEON GREYJOY.
LOOOOOOOL
No it's reak!
HA! now that you said it, he really does look like him xD
Yep, I totally am.
Bluefan heon greyjoy with lasers. How cool is that!?
One of the best channels on youtube! Your the man destin!
Photon torpedoes are from star trek, not star wars ;)
The MG7-A which Luke used to destroy the first Deathstar was a proton torpedo, which could cause the confusion as it sounds similar :D
Was about to mention it !
him88v8 yeah, Luke uses a proton torpedo I think
I'm sure that will be a large portion of the comments. I didn't even have to scroll down to know this thread was here. lol.
oh my god, you can read the screen. good job.
It was just so cool to see minutephysics' video and yours right next to each other in the subscription box :)
You should team up with Photonicinduction
i don't remember when i subscribed this channel, but I CERTAINLY DON'T REGRET IT
The mirrors are "perfects", reflecting much better than those we use in bathroom. The shape is flat... a tiny bit concave to force any photon that was bouncing at an angle to get back in line.
The is a tiny hole at the center of one mirror to let a small percentage of photons, such as 2%, to exit after having been reflected 50 time or more.
This hole is the reason a laser emit a narrow beam of light. The beam diverge a little over large distance. The best laser firing at the moon get a beam a few miles wide. The air make it impossible anyway to keep a beam focussed.
The laser "tsunami" from spectra physics create 10 pulses per second with light so intense that the air ionize, creating a super sonic boom on each pulse. It sounds like a whip slapping fast or lightning, which are example of white noise created by all frequencies meeting at the same time when the sound wave catchup with the air molecules, which moved above the speed of sound.
it's awesome when you can understand johan.
Hey its me destin being chill at uranus with my alien buddy jakasmdmdks today we are going to learn about dark energy’s origin
oh sweet you both put put links to each-other's videos so i can go on an indefinite loop, possibly forever, and become a laser genius!!
The train in NL has internet connection ? Mind Blown :o
What kind of third world country do you live in where trains don't have internet connection?
I've always wondered how they work, awesome video, man!
Like als je Nederlands bent
+michiel hoebeeck lol waarom ook niet
+marijn177 yay
i'm subscribed to you and minutephysics so it made me happy when i saw you guys linking :D
NEDURLAND!! :D
Je kan echt horen dat-ie Nederlands is hahaha :P
Zeker!
such a good way to begin my day with this video!
first video ive seen with no bob comments!!!
i know,right?
☻/ This is Bob . Copy and paste him
/▌ all over TH-cam
/ \ so he can take over and take down Google+
haha its a joke
TheMegamario50 TH-cam thinks your "die" translates into "the".
haha
this channel is like what every slow motion channel was meant to be.... nice work there..
+1 subscribed
i almost decided to study physics in twente
anotherKyle in what?
It's a region in The Netherlands. About in the middle on the east side bordering Germany. University of Twente in Enschede is (afaik) a pretty well-known technical university.
Touwtje Ah ok why'd you decide not to then
+IndustrialDonut Oh, I was not the original post. I happen to live close to the university which is why I elaborated.
Touwtje Oh right lol I should have caught that ^.^
Destin, i trust you to deliver.
(hitting "like" before finishing the video, and never being disappointed)
:D
Nederland oh Nederland
I'm always amazed at the number of non-native-English speakers who actually speak English very well. Needless to say, Johan is one!
Dutch are best
prepare for 10x views. Minute Physics is your... godsend..
i don't need no subtitels my native language is dutch XD( ik heb geen subtitels nodig mijn alledaagse taal is nederlands XD)
oke
Heel boeiend man
oja btw foute gramatica (double negative)
in mn aars
aarskanker
I should be doing homework, but instead I'm watching these videos over and over.
But...you didn't explain how lasers work.
misteratoz Yeah, but in the recomended video is an explication 😁
Omg its 2017 at the time of me writing this and man, Destin looks so much younger. It's crazy
Soy solo un comentario en español pasando, permiso :3 #MinutoDeFísica
Yo también :3
New Player fodasse
Yo igual
Saludo amigo, desde Texas 🤠👋
I built one of these for the first time in Intermediate Lab this semester! Science is so much better when you can understand it.
Laser limbo
vsauce, smarter every day, and minute physics should all make a video together.
so many applications for measurements with a configuration like this
So it's my understanding that the light energy bounces back and forth between the two mirrors (one being just less reflective than the other) until the beam breaks through the less reflective mirror which results in beam emission. That tells me that there is a substantial energy loss. Most of the power remains inside the open cavity tube allowing only a lesser percentage of the power to escape.
We have auto reactive welding masks the lenses of which are transparent until the goggles detect the higher light energy emitted by arc action. The lenses of the goggles automatically darken to protect the welders' eyes, then return to transparent once the more intense light ceases.
Would there be any way to create an auto response mirrored surface that would react in similar fashion? With such a mirrored surface, the two mirrors (one being a stable full reflective mirror at the back end of the laser) could be made completely reflective until such time as beam emission was desired allowing for full power emission instead of partial.
I bought an LPM from Johan, he is the best guy ever!
Thanks, I finaly figured out how this works.
thank you, i didnt understand the video by minute physics at first, now i do :)!
I saw two videos about lasers (minute physics and this) and thought it must be laser day. Turns out its laser month!
I LOVE the end music, it needs to be on itunes!
I love how you referenced eachother's videos. :)
Hey a cool video idea, so about a month ago I had my dad shine my 500mw green laser into the sky at night as I walked to the other side of the house to see if you can see the beam from the side and as I looked up it looks like they are shining the laser tilted towards you because I had no point of reference and because it shined miles into the air
this pleases me for i am dutch and a huge fan of smarter every day and physics in general. and if it ain't dutch it ain't much ;)
So I like your videos and how they are very slow but a few videos that go more in depth or are longer would make me very happy!
Welcome to Holland!
Welkom in Nederland!
thanks destin, made my day!
It was weird to see this vid and the minute physics vid side by side in my sub box.
Photon Torpedoes, Destin? While pointing at a Star Wars shirt? Unaxcceptable. But since I love your videos and I shall forgive you. Keep doing awesome things!
I was at ESA ESTEC in Holland about 1.5 mo. ago. It was a great time!
@CoDisafishy
Dutch accents are hard.
hi destin... every time i watch your video...it blows my mind... and learn new things from it... so i have this very weird thing that i hope you can explain why superman have this powers in our planet while they dont have that power in there own world...
Thank you Johan. Thank you Destin.
Here's an idea for your next video, "Magnets, How do they Work?"
Laser Limbo definitely sounds like lot of fun :)
Destin, you're so nice to everyone else you forgot to put a link to your facebook.
oh no i'm trapped, this vid sends me to minute physics and minute physics sends me back here.. MUST OBEY
@Zapii112 Hardly anyone knows what FART means...
If you want to know: Frequency Actuated Rectal Tremor.
Pretty self-explaining
what an appropriate shirt ! thanx so much for explaining !
Would it be possible to use some kind of shutter-type device, opening and closing extremely rapidly, to let more than 2% of the light escape, giving a brighter beam without having to have so much power consumption and heat inside the laser tube?
The other 98% is used for reflecting back and forth to build up the coherit light (some of which is lost of course). eventually each and every photon will get it's 2% chance to escape. It is sort of like a negative feedback loop: The more light the mirror reflects back into the chamber, the more it will build up, and ideally, the more photons there are to escape, but more photons + more reflectivity = same light output, I would think.
In theory, the shutter would probably need to stay closed for a few milliseconds to build up the beam, then it opens to optically 'discharge' that buildup, then close quickly again to build up the photons again. This will result in bursts of LOTS of laserlight, but for such a brief period of time (nanoseconds?) then the light would have to build up again for a few milliseconds.
In practice, the shutter will need to have a mirrored surface that is very well adjusted, but I'd imagine it would 'shake' loose quickly, and idealistically offers no advantage other than standard pulsed gas laser.
You just have to remember that other 98% of light not allowed to escape is basically stored up for later use, and the majority of laserlight will escape.
Good points. I was just thinking (after your reaply) maybe using glass with a chemically-reactive "tint" sandwiched between 2 layers that can change states from tinted-to-clear in a matter of nanoseconds, that is constantly changing state, much like "Active 3D glasses" do.
I dunno, this type of physics is over my head. Lasers are COOL, that's about all I know about them!
Yeah. I think you are thinking of LCD technology. I wonder how solid state lasers work, what was shogun in the video was just for gas discharge tubes...
It does exist, it's called cavity dumping but unfortunately it would only lower the average output power.
Have a look into cavity dumping, it's a method to generate short pulses. Average output won't increase. Q-switching is the other way around, actually stoppping lasing to let the population inversion grow before opening the "shutter", creating one huge pulse because of the stored energy.
This video is relevant for sections 15.1 and 15.2 in the book "Fundamentals Of Photonics, Second Edition" in my course "Optics & Photonics" at LTU in Sweden.
I am pointing that out here as a reminder in case I forget, lolz.
I always thought that lasers worked by pushing energy into atoms inside a semi-silvered capsule to the point that the outermost electron becomes excited to the point that it jumps out to the next electron shell, then immediately releasing the excess energy by releasing a photon and falling back into its original electron shell. I thought that these photons bounced around in all directions in the semi-silvered capsule until they met the semi-silvered end caps of the capsule at the correct angle so that the photons could pass through, to create a laser beam.
the colour is defined by the gas, different gasses will emit different coloured light
This was one of my lab experiment last year, and it's super hard to get the mirrors perfectly aligned, I never get the laser working.
by the way laser is the acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation
I love your vids Destin. Keep it up
It's mainly because of regressive voice assimilation and other small articulation thingamawuts that occur naturally in Hollandic Dutch and they then transfer to their English
LMAO am I such a big nerd for catching the photon torpedo error before the guy corrected him.
This may have been pointed out before but the caption titles for "what Johan is saying" and "what Destin thinks he is saying" are mixed up. The funny version is under "what Destin thinks he is saying".
Jason Axford Yeah 😁
Minute Physics named it's laser video "How Lasers Work (In Theory)" and linked to this.
Destin named this video "How Lasers Work (In Practice)" and linked to the Henry's video.
Thank you Johan!
Look at that dude! Little did he know, one day he'll enter a submarine and make videos in there
So here you said you have 2% of the light going out of the mirror and 98% reflecting back; is there an optimal "imperfection" for the mirror to have the strongest laser with only changing the mirror?
is it powerful?
what kind of laser technology is used on laser weapons ? This neon,helium is appropriate ?
Damm, awesome video, exactly what I was looking for!
I (as a Dutch person) notice that this person can be from the Netherlands, and in some cases it turns out it was someone from Belgium. But I find it hard to notice instantly, luckily there are other ways to find out about it.
I'm working on it.
He is my hero.