Lasers

On anyone’s list of things that are undeniably cool, lasers take one of the top 5 spots easily. I mean, look at them, they’re lasers! If you like them at least as much as I do, then you’re probably also interested in knowing how they work.

But if physics is like a foreign language to you, then reading about it may not be of great help, unless you try and pair it with a cool simulation aptly titled Lasers.

Now remember that Lasers was designed as an educational app, so don’t expect it to give you any answers if you don’t know what questions to ask. It’s safe to say that you could learn the most from the simulation if you had a teacher properly explain each function.

But with just enough YouTube videos and short articles, you may come to understand that a laser is actually an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation and that it can be created by exciting the electrons of atoms (which are kept in special containers, between two mirrors that are facing each other) until they emit light particles called photons. This is basically what you do with this Java simulation.

In the first tab, you get to excite only one atom with light in order to make it release new photons. Remember that the lamps aren’t actually the lasers, as you only create one after you check the Enable mirrors option; remember to set an optimum transparency level for your second mirror, so that the photons can bounce back and forth but still escape the container.

In the second tab, you use a few lamps at a time in order to excite a multitude of atoms, thus creating a far more powerful laser. You’ll probably start having fun once you get the hang of it, but be careful not to (spoiler alert!) blow your laser up.