npub1a4…razsc on Nostr: Short story time: When I was doing my PhD, we had in the lab an old Argon laser ...
Short story time:
When I was doing my PhD, we had in the lab an old Argon laser (which we used to pump a Ti:Sapphire, for those familiar with lasers). If you have never seen one, Argon lasers are massive, can output a ton of power, and eat a crazy amount of current, so much that the laser had its own dedicated industrial pentaphase plug.
I don't remember how many Amperes of current flew in those cables. What I remember is that, when you turned on the switch in the morning, the change in current (from zero to whatever the steady state value was) was enough to make the cable shake.
This happens because the electromagnetic field inside and around the cable stores momentum, and so it kicked the cable when building up.
I am not sure that laser still exists, and I have never been able to find a video of a cable shaking when the current is switched on, but it would be great to have such a video when teaching electrodynamics (and in particular how momentum and angular momentum can be stored in an electromagnetic field).
#ITeachPhysics #Physics #Electrodynamics #Laser
When I was doing my PhD, we had in the lab an old Argon laser (which we used to pump a Ti:Sapphire, for those familiar with lasers). If you have never seen one, Argon lasers are massive, can output a ton of power, and eat a crazy amount of current, so much that the laser had its own dedicated industrial pentaphase plug.
I don't remember how many Amperes of current flew in those cables. What I remember is that, when you turned on the switch in the morning, the change in current (from zero to whatever the steady state value was) was enough to make the cable shake.
This happens because the electromagnetic field inside and around the cable stores momentum, and so it kicked the cable when building up.
I am not sure that laser still exists, and I have never been able to find a video of a cable shaking when the current is switched on, but it would be great to have such a video when teaching electrodynamics (and in particular how momentum and angular momentum can be stored in an electromagnetic field).
#ITeachPhysics #Physics #Electrodynamics #Laser