Asianometry The Incredible Femtosecond Laser
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May 8, 2025 Discover the mind-boggling concept of femtoseconds, a unit of time so small it's beyond comprehension. Learn how femtosecond lasers have revolutionized fields from chemistry to medicine. Explore the historical advancements that made ultrafast measurements possible—like flash photolysis and innovative laser technologies. Delve into the impact of titanium-doped sapphire lasers and their game-changing applications. Finally, glimpse the future potential of capturing events even faster with atosecond pulses.
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Femtosecond Timescale Power
- A femtosecond is one quadrillionth of a second, much smaller than we can normally perceive.
- It enables observation of extremely fast phenomena in physics and chemistry as they happen.
Muybridge's Horse Motion Discovery
- Edward Muybridge used spring-activated shutters to capture horse galloping in 1878.
- His photos corrected misconceptions about horse movement and pioneered motion picture technology.
Kerr Effect Enables Fast Shutters
- The Kerr effect enables rapid changes in refractive index using an electric field, powering ultra-fast optical shutters.
- NASA used Kerr cell shutters in the 1950s for high-speed cameras capturing up to 50,000 frames per second.