Collaborate Disseminate
The double-slit experiment, first performed by [Thomas Young] in 1801 provided the first definitive proof of the dual wave-particle nature of photons. A similar experiment can be performed that shows …read more Continue reading Double-Slit Time Diffraction At Optical Frequencies
[The Thought Emporium] has been fascinated by holograms for a long time, and in all sorts of different ways. His ultimate goal right now is to work up to creating …read more Continue reading Creating Customized Diffraction Lenses For Lasers
Here at Hackaday, we love it when someone picks up the ball from a previous project and runs with it. That’s what we’re all about, really — putting out cool …read more Continue reading An Improved Spectrometer, No Lasers Required
No matter how small you make a pair of tweezers, there will always be things that tweezers aren’t great at handling. Among those are various fluids, and especially aerosolized droplets, …read more Continue reading Optical Tweezers Investigate Tiny Particles
We all know that light and sound are wave phenomena, but of very different kinds. Light is electromechanical in nature, while sound is mechanical. Light can travel through a vacuum, …read more Continue reading Acousto-Optic Filter Uses Sound to Bend Light
Play around with optics long enough and sooner or later you’re probably going to want a spectrometer. Optical instruments are famously expensive, though, at least for high-quality units. But a …read more Continue reading Pi-Based Spectrometer Puts the Complexity in the Software
The basics of digital logic are pretty easy to master, and figuring out how the ones and zeroes flow through various kinds of gates is often an interesting exercise. Taking things down a level and breaking the component AND, OR, …read more
Continue reading Interference Patterns Harnessed for Optical Logic Gates
In graduate school, I had a seminar course where one of the sections was about X-ray crystallography. I was excited, because being able to discern the three-dimensional structure of macromolecules just by shining X-rays on them seemed like magic to me. And thanks to a lackluster professor, after the section …read more
Continue reading A Beginner’s Guide to X-Ray Crystallography