What Are Lasers and How Do They Work?

Curious Kids Every Day: A Daily Educational Podcast

This episode explores the scientific principles behind lasers, contrasting their cinematic portrayal in Star Wars with real-world physics. H

Key takeaways

• LASER is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
• Photons are the fundamental tiny packets of light energy used in laser production.

Main topics

• Physics of Lasers
• Star Wars vs. Reality

Notable quotes

A laser is just... Light.

Conclusion

An engaging educational deep-dive that teaches children the fascinatin

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) What are lasers and how do they work? Hi, welcome to curious kids every day. I'm Josh. How are you doing today? It's so good to hear from you Hey, do you want to hear about one of my family's favorite movies to watch together? We love to watch the movie Star Wars Speaker 2 (0:34) My kids love running around the house and pretending that they have lightsabers like the Jedi. Do you know what a lightsaber is in Star Wars? Well, a lightsaber is like a sword, but it's made of light. Kind of looks like a long laser beam. And speaking of lasers, in Star Wars, whenever someone uses a blaster, a laser blast appears on screen and it moves really quickly. You know, when I watched Star Wars for the first time, I thought lasers were just something in the movies. I thought it was a Star Wars thing. I didn't realize that lasers were real. Well, they obviously work very differently than they do in the movies. We don't actually have lightsabers or blasters, but lasers are a very real part of our world. And they can do some amazing things. Have you ever heard of a laser pointer? I was thinking about lasers today because I got a question from a kid in the Curious Kids Club named Julian. Julian was curious. What Speaker 1 (1:45) are lasers? Speaker 2 (1:52) Okay, so you probably won't be surprised to learn that a laser is just... Light. It makes sense. It looks like light, right? When you use a laser pointer, it's kind of like a flashlight. Though it does feel a little different, doesn't it? Well, see, the reason for that is that laser beams work a little differently than other light. For example, when you use a regular flashlight, it spreads light out in whatever direction you point it. But a laser pointer, it just creates a dot in the direction you point it. Regular flashlight spreads out more and a laser dot is very focused. That's because laser light can be made into a very narrow beam that stays together much better as it travels. But how do you get light to do that? Well, to understand that, we need to talk about something called photons. Speaker 2 (3:03) A photon is a tiny packet of light energy. Inside a laser is some kind of material that gives off photons. Depending on the laser, that material could be gas or a crystal or something called a semiconductor. Energy is added to that material. That energy might come from electricity or from another light source. Speaker 2 (3:31) Added energy gets tiny particles inside the material excited. And when I say excited, I don't mean like the kind of excited that my kids get when I tell them that we're going to