Engineering
The Helium-Neon Laser
Introduction In my laser articles Iv’e often mentioned the helium-neon (He-Ne) laser which I have used to align the feedback mirrors and make holograms. I thought that it would be remiss of me not to [more…]
Lasers
Mathematics
Playing With Light
Science, like a sport, is an art that’s well practised. To lose educates you more than to win instantly. Okay, that’s corny but I’ve found that my project failures have taught me more information and [more…]
Animals
Larry’s Diary, Week One Hundred and Fifty-One
Monday Good morning folks, I’m back! WG is back from his cruise and seems to have done little other than eat and laze around in the sun. Lots of things have occurred in No.10 while [more…]
Computing
A Simple R6G Dye Laser – Part 3
If you’ve been following along (well done you!) then you might recall that we need a fast switch that works at a very high voltage for the laser’s pump lamp and, indeed, for the laser [more…]
Computing
A Simple R6G Dye Laser – Part 2
Lamp Light And Laser Light Pulsed lasers, like this, use an intense burst of white light (lasting fractions of a second) to stimulate the electrons in the laser’s gain medium. In the above photo you [more…]
Computing
A Simple R6G Dye Laser – Part 1
Introduction First of all, it’s great to see that Going-Postal is still up and running. It’s always a pleasure to write an article and have it published here. It’s also good to see a lot [more…]
19th Century
Holography, Part Four
Holograph Examples The PFG-01 holographic film that I’ve used in the examples below is ideally suited to making transmission holograms but it can also be used to make reflection holograms. Reflection Holograms One of the [more…]
19th Century
Holography, Part Three
A Simple Dual Beam Setup We’ve got our film, developer and a safety lamp. Now we need a holographic camera. Well, not exactly a camera. You can’t take a picture of rolling hills or a [more…]
19th Century
Holography, Part Two
A Holographic Camera Standard photography uses a lens system to focus an image onto a film or an electronic sensor. If you recall from part one, Dennis Gabor had a problem with his electron microscope’s [more…]