• Question: How big is your lab with the lasers?

    Asked by Jake Butler to Padraic on 9 Feb 2015.
    • Photo: Padraic Morrissey

      Padraic Morrissey answered on 9 Feb 2015:

      Hey Jake
      If you look at my profile you’ll see a picture of my lab (the second pic) but it’s a little difficult to see everything because there are a lot of pieces of equipment in the way! The lab is pretty big, maybe about the size of a medium size class room.

      Most of the room is taken up by the optical benches where the lasers are kept on. Because the lasers are very sensitive, any vibrations can cause them to brake or not work properly. To prevent vibrations, the optical benches we have float on a pocket of air, so that they don’t wobble (kind of a bit like a hovercraft). If they didn’t float, the smallest vibrations from even cars driving on the road outside the building could mess our experiments up!

      On the benches we have microscopes to examine the lasers and also lots of electronics to power them. Most of the expensive and big equipment is used to analyse the behaviour of the lasers.

      We have about 5 people working in the lab at a time, so it can get a bit crowded! I do most of my design work at my desk where it’s a bit quieter 🙂

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