HAPPY BIRTHDAY LASER!
Well, close to happy birthday, I’m just one day late. I’ll send flowers and one of those belated birthday cards. Hopefully you have been keeping up with our celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first working laser so I don’t need to tell you much more. In case you haven’t, the first laser was demonstrated by Theodor Maiman on May 16th, 1960. Our own blogger, Mike Lucibella, more commonly known as Quantum, does a better job talking about the history than I ever could so you should go read that.
Just in time for the the birthday, President Obama released a statement saying, among other things, that he is “pleased to join all those celebrating the 50th anniversary of the development of the world’s first working laser” and that he “looks forward with real excitement to further advances in this field and new applications as yet undreamed of today.” If you would like to read the whole statement, too bad, you can’t. However, the laser was quite flattered by Mr. Obama’s comments.
Normally you would sing happy birthday to someone on such an occasion, but that song doesn’t really teach much about lasers or physics. Instead, I suggest we sing Britney Spear’s Crazy, only with alternate lyrics about lasers. So print out the lyrics below and do some creative laser karaoke! Better yet, send us your own music videos of PhysicsCentral’s (You’ve Got Me) Lasing!
(You’ve Got Me) Lasing
Lasing
Baby, you start with a core
First one was ruby but now there are more
Pumping shakes its electrons around
So they transition from a state that is ground
In a mirrored cavity
Quantum transitions set the frequency
emission makes a laser lase
photons emitted are all in phase
You’ve got me Lasing
Electrons leap
Releasing photons so I can keep
Lasing and it looks so bright
Baby turn me on you’ve got coherent light.
Coherence is the property
That makes it a laser not just an LED
Normal light doesn’t work as a team
Photons are in step in a laser beam
emission makes a laser lase
photons emitted are all in phase
You’ve got me Lasing
Electrons leap
Releasing photons, so I can keep
Lasing and it looks so bright
Baby turn me on you’ve got coherent light.
Lasing, electrons quantum leap
Releasing photons, I’ve got to keep
Lasing and it looks so bright
Now you’ve got coherent light.
You’ve got me Lasing
Electrons quantum leap
Releasing photons so I can keep
Lasing and it looks so bright
Baby turn me on you’ve got coherent light.
You’ve got me Lasing
electrons quantum leap
Releasing photons, I’ve got to keep
Lasing and it looks so bright
Baby turn me on you’ve got coherent light.
Baby turn me on you’ve got coherent light.