“You can do a lot of cool shit with lasers,” said Evan Peairs ’16, a physics senior who is using a laser in his thesis. “Lots of science.”
In addition to being prevalent in Science Fiction, lasers have an astounding variety of real world practical and scientific applications. From laser pointers to CD readers, cataract surgery and measuring the distance between atoms in molecules, laser technology is used in all kinds of fields, including Reed’s physics, art, and chemistry departments. Physical chemistry professor Dan Gerrity said, “You can burn things, cut things, blow air up into plasma; all sorts of stuff. In physics they’re using lasers to cool molecules down and analyze their behavior at very low temperatures. There’s such a vast array of applications.”