Laser, light of our time

Submitted by rociobv on


Presentation

In 1960 Theodore Maiman succeeded in the first experimental demonstration of the laser. Fifty years later, it has revolutionized science: eye surgery, spectroscopy, laser plasma physics, optical biomanipulation, attoscience … But not only science: lasers have a tremendous impact in our daily life. We find them everywhere: in the scanner of the supermarket, in the music player at home, in the printer of the office… In summary, it is difficult to figure out a scientific discipline that does not involve a laser or a day without any laser-based devices. In spite of that, we found out that not many people knew what a laser is or how any of these devices work.


The project

Our proposal consisted of writing, editing and printing an outreach book about lasers to make people aware of the impact of the laser in our society. With this initiative we tried to provide a timeless element that could be useful not only during the past year, but also in the future.
With this project we pursued to raise interest for science among the general public (especially young students) and make them aware of the importance of scientific research and development, illustrating how it leads to innovation.
For this reason, the book was thought as an open resource. Our aim was to freely distribute copies in schools, high-schools and libraries of our region. Later on, we started to receive requests by individuals and universities worldwide. Recently it can also be freely downloaded, ensuring that it is available worldwide for future use.
The team involved in the project consisted of 21 students and researchers, all of them from the Universidad de Salamanca and the Centro de Láseres Pulsados (CLPU). Five of us (all predoctoral fellows) acted as editors.
We received financial support from the Laserfest project through a grant awarded to our student chapter of The Optical Society of America (OSA). The CLPU and the OSA Foundation (OSAF) also joined the initiative. This budget allowed us to print and distribute 2000 copies.
The project lasted for one year. From March to May 2010, we worked in the outline and distributed the tasks among the authors. By August we had the first draft and started the review process. In December the book was ready and sent for printing. In 2011 we advertise and distribute copies (see “Advertisement” and “Impact” sections below). More recently it is also available in the internet.


The book “El láser, la luz de nuestro tiempo”

Download the book
The purpose of the book was not giving exhaustive and technical lessons, but being of general interest, amusing and comprehensive for students and the general public. The first four chapters are devoted to explain basics concepts about general optics and the laser (how it works, history and curiosities). In the next chapters we provide a classification of lasers, paying a special attention to pulsed lasers. The book continues with daily life applications such as the printer, the CD player, or telecommunications, to name some examples. The next chapter is devoted to biomedical applications, such as eye surgery or cell manipulation. Industrial applications are also of great importance and deserved a book chapter. Among others, the book covers welding, marking or laser cut. The last part of the book is devoted to scientific applications (nonlinear optics, spectroscopy, quantum optics, laser cooling, optical tweezers…) and cutting-edge research, including the latest scientific revolutions: ultraintense lasers, x-ray generation, plasma physics or the most recent advances in laser proton acceleration for cancer treatment. The book is closed with two appendices: laser security and home-made experiments with a laser pointer.
The book is written in Spanish. To the best of our knowledge, there are not many scientific books in this language. This lack of resources in their mother tongue is one of the main problems for educators in Spain and Latin America.


Advertisement

One of our main concerns was finding effective strategies to let people know about the project. We finally found several ways to advertise the book:
• Free distribution in schools, libraries and universities
• Local newspapers – a piece of news appeared in some relevant local newspapers.
• Internet (in our website, blogs, scientific outreach sites, professional societies …)
• Conferences – we took advantage of some conferences to distribute copies among the attendees. Two examples were the IONS-9 (International OSA Network of Students) and the OSA Student Leadership Meeting.
• Outreach activities – we also organize outreach activities for schools. We took advantage of these events to give the teacher a copy of the book.
• Professional magazines like Optics&Photonics News (OPN) – we posted an announcement and a review appeared in the “Book review” section.
A complete list of press coverage and news related to the book can be found here.


Impact

In principle, the initiative was thought as a local project. We contacted the city council foundation and the University that helped us to send the books to schools and libraries of the region without any costs. At a national level the book was distributed among all the Spanish universities.
The acceptance was very good and we started to have international requests, not only from organizations, but also from individuals. We asked for an OSAF grant that allowed us to cover shipping expenses to Latin America.
A track of the distributed copies was kept by creating a database with the emails of organizations and individuals who received a book. Since the book has recently been uploaded in the internet, we do not have the webstats yet to measure the impact it has as an online resource.

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