"Your Own Laser Experiments"

Doing laser experiments at home are in most cases challenging due missing tools. Nevertheless some easy but still very interesting experiments can be done demonstrating fundamental phenomena. By chance I found a homepage which describes in detail and well explained some very interesting and easy to do experiments.

The page is the EU-HOU project: “Hands on Universe, Europe. Bringing frontline interactive astronomy to the classroom” and has the goal of renewing the teaching of science and awaking the interest of science to the young generation. The page covers mainly experiments from astronomy but some nice optics experiments (important for astronomy) are presented too.

EU-HOU, startpage

Four easy laser optics experiments can be found here:

EU-HOU, Laser Experiments
EU-HOU, home-made spectroscope

They handle of the:

• “Refraction , or bent light”
• “Determination of the index of refraction by a laser pointer”
• “Eureka, Light is a wave”
• "A home-made spectroscope"
  

My favorite is the third one but all of them are great. The easiest one to perform is the first one and very interesting for many peoples will be the last one. But let me show you some more pictures:

(bent light)

(measuring the refraction index)

(halogen bulb and its spectrum)

All the pictures are taken from the EU-HOU page. Note that the EU-HOU page is addressed for teachers but every pupil (high school) can do it too. And please,

never never look into a laser beam!

It can cause serious irreparable eye damage! Hence, take care even with a laser pointer. Enjoy the experiments!