LASER Is Not a Word: 5 Facts About Lasers That Sound Fake (But Aren’t)

We use lasers every day in our workshop, so I got curious about where they come from. First fact: “laser” isn’t really a word. It’s an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Second fact: the idea behind it came from Albert Einstein, who described stimulated emission in 1917, long before anyone could build one. The first working laser, a ruby laser, was built by Theodore Maiman in 1960.

Third fact: laser light is special. Ordinary light from a bulb is a jumble of colours going every direction, but a laser’s light is almost one colour and its waves march in step, which is called being coherent. That’s why a laser beam stays so narrow and can be focused to such a tiny point, which is exactly what we need to engrave fine detail.

Fourth fact: scientists still fire lasers at the Moon. Apollo astronauts left special mirrors there, and lasers from Earth bounce off them so researchers can measure the distance to the Moon very precisely. They’ve found it drifts away from us by about 3.8 centimetres every year.

And fifth, my favourite: the first product ever scanned with a laser barcode scanner in a shop, in 1974, was a pack of chewing gum. Lasers went from a theory on paper, to a ruby in a lab, to the Moon and the supermarket checkout, and now to a workshop in Kildare where an 11-year-old uses one to make glowing crystals. Not bad for a “word” that isn’t even a word.

Got an idea? Comment below and I’ll test it in the workshop. Dad says I can’t promise everything, but I’ll try!