Collaborate Disseminate
Let’s be honest — not too many of us have a need to deposit nanometer-thick films onto substrates in a controlled manner. But if you do find yourself in such …read more Continue reading Thin Coatings Require an Impressive Collection of Equipment and Know-How
Lasers do all sorts of interesting things and — as with so many things — more is better. Korean scientists announced recently they’ve created the most powerful laser beam. 1023 …read more Continue reading The Laser Power Record Has Been Broken
What happens when you mix over 23,000 coffee stirrers and a Raspberry Pi camera together? Probably nothing except for a mess, unless you very specifically pack the plastic straws and …read more Continue reading Coffee Stirrers Act as Lens for This Digital Straw Camera
When one thinks about microscopy, it seems to be mostly qualitative. Looking at a slide teeming with bacteria or protozoans is less about making measurements and more about recognizing features …read more Continue reading 3D-Printed Laser Scanning Confocal Microscope Measures Microns
Engineers at Stanford have created a new optical device that can easily manipulate light into basically any color desired. The system uses a series of modulators to fine-tune the frequencies of individual photons to change their color.Continue ReadingC… Continue reading Photonic device makes light any color by manipulating individual photons
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
Even diffuse objects like clouds or sugar cubes cast shadows, because they’re disordered media that scatter light waves. But now, researchers at TU Wien and Utrecht University have found a way to manipulate light waves to pass through, projecting an im… Continue reading Tailor-made light passes through opaque obstacles like they’re not there
Researchers have adapted an advanced microscopy technique to take “super-resolution” 3D images inside the brains of living mice. The method is so precise the team was able to image the tiny twigs on the branches of neurons, and could watch how they cha… Continue reading 3D “super-resolution” images show tiny structures in living mouse brains
Materials get their optical properties based on how much they reflect, absorb or transmit different wavelengths (colors) of light. Usually optical coatings either reflect or transmit a given color of light, but now researchers at the University of Roch… Continue reading Optical coating reflects and transmits the same wavelength of light
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