PHYSICS 11N: Lasers, lasers, nothing but lasers
General Education Requirements
Not currently certified for a requirement. Courses are typically considered for Ways certification a quarter in advance.
Course Description
Lasers are nearly everywhere. Lasers are in your phone, in clocks, security scanners, automobiles, hospital operating rooms, satellites, airplanes, undersea cables, dance floors and bars, and the entire internet. And that's not to mention newer stuff, like virtual reality hardware or quantum computers or gravity wave detectors or attosecond x-rays (whatever they are). Without lasers, a lot of things we take for granted now and a lot of things we imagine for our future simply couldn't work at all. But how much do you really know about them? What are they? How do they work? You're at Stanford now, so let's find out. That’s what this IntroSem is about. By the end of the class, you will not only know what a laser is, and how it works, but you will build one that you can keep.
Meet the Instructor: Philip Bucksbaum
“I'm an atomic physicist, which means that I explore the quantum behavior of atoms and molecules, using lasers as a primary tool. I grew up in a small town in Iowa, then attended Harvard for college and Berkeley for grad school, before joining the legendary Bell Laboratories in the 1980s. I joined the Physics faculty at the University of Michigan in the '90s and found my ultimate home here at Stanford and SLAC in 2006. My other major interest besides laser-atom physics is federal science policy. To pursue that I've been President of the American Physical Society and President of the Optical Society (now called Optica), and I'm also an active member of the National Academy of Sciences.”
