Collaborate Disseminate
Optical cavities – two mirrors arranged to reflect light multiple times between them – form the basis of lasers and certain optical filters. Since any angle between the two mirrors …read more Continue reading 2026 Frikkin Lasers Challenge: Measuring Nanometer-Scale Displacements with an Optical Cavity
Laser diodes are convenient light sources, but for precise optical work their often-elliptical beam profile leaves something to be desired. One way to get around this is to couple the …read more Continue reading Building a Fiber-Coupled Laser Source for Precision Optics
You normally think of fiber optic as something used in network cables. However, scientists employ dedicated fibers to detect earthquakes. In simple terms, they fire a laser down the fiber …read more Continue reading The Walls Don’t Have Ears, But Fiber Optic Does
Every now and then in our travels we come upon a project with such an obvious need that it’s almost a surprise nobody has thought of doing it before. So …read more Continue reading A Digital Audio Recorder For TOSLink
[Brainiac75] is a fan of fiber optic lamps, except for one thing—they’re often remarkably dim. Thus, they set out to hack the technology to deliver terrifying amounts of light while …read more Continue reading Fiber Optic Lamp Modified To Be Scarily Bright
Before a spectrometer can do any useful work, it needs to be calibrated to identify wavelengths correctly. This is usually done by detecting several characteristic peaks or dips in a …read more Continue reading Building a Xenon Lamp for Spectroscopy
TOSLINK was developed in the early 1980s as a simple interface for sending digital audio over fiber optic cables, and despite its age, is still featured on plenty of modern …read more Continue reading Sending TOSLINK Wirelessly With Lasers
In his regular browsing on AliExpress, [Ben Jeffrey] came across something he didn’t understand—a $5 fiber optic to RF cable TV adapter. It was excessively cheap, and even more mysteriously, …read more Continue reading Tearing Down A Mysteriously Cheap $5 Fiber Optic To Cable TV Adapter
Spending time as wee hackers perusing the family atlas taught us an appreciation for a good map, and [Billy Roberts], a cartographer at NREL, has served up a doozy with …read more Continue reading NREL Maps Out US Data Infrastructure
If you’ve ever seen those cheap LED fiber optic wands at the dollar store, you’ve probably just thought of them as a simple novelty. However, as [Ancient] shows us, you …read more Continue reading Cheap Fiber Optic Wand Toy Becomes Tiny Weird Display