Diffraction gratings are curious things. Score a series of equally spaced tiny lines in a surface, and it will cause reflected or transmitted light to bend and separate into its component wavelengths.

The spectrum of laser technologies available to hackers has gradually widened from basic gas lasers through CO2 tubes, diode lasers, and now fiber lasers. One of the newer entries is the MOPA laser, ...

One of the coolest things about physics is that the same basic concept can pop up in several seemingly unrelated things: say, a CD, the seed shrimp’s antennae, certain fossils in the Burgess shale, ...

As stated in the article titled ‘An Introduction to a Spectrometer: The Slit’, a spectrometer is an imaging system that maps a plurality of monochromatic images of the entrance slit onto the detector ...

Mimicking nature A material designed to mimic a quirky iridescent patch on a butterfly's wing may help prevent counterfeiting, say US engineers. The 'photonic' material, so called because it affects ...

A variety of ultrathin nanomechanical diffraction gratings that have been fashioned from the “wonder material” graphene have been created by an international team of researchers. The team wanted to ...

Spectrographs are important tools for studying many biological and chemical processes and substances, from pigments to plant growth and nucleic acids to pharmaceuticals, providing information about ...