• Question: what was the biggest laser you ever made

    Asked by eva to Padraic on 31 Jan 2015.
    • Photo: Padraic Morrissey

      Padraic Morrissey answered on 31 Jan 2015:

      Good question Eva!
      In my job we actually try to make the smallest lasers possible so that they can fit inside of laptops, TVs and DVD players. The lasers I usually design are so small that you can barely see them with your eye! On a euro coin you could fit thousands of them…which is kinda hard to imagine! We need big microscopes to look at them. They can be quite powerful though, so if you looked right into them when they are turned on you could easily go blind! We have to be really careful in the lab when working.

      The biggest laser I’ve ever seen was in a lab in UCC and it took up an entire room. It was so powerful that it could easily burn through bricks/metal so the people working in the lab had to be really careful. I never got to use it though!

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