In technical terms, laser refers a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. We’ve rounded up five awesome laser stunts, creations, and more for your viewing enjoyment. Continue reading to see them all.

5. Laser Popping

Lasers differ from other sources of light because they emit light coherently. Its spatial coherence allows a laser to be focused to a tight spot, and this enables applications like laser cutting and laser lithography.

4. Popping Popcorn

Its spatial coherence also keeps a laser beam collimated over long distances, and this enables laser pointers to work. Laser also have high temporal coherence which allows them to have a very narrow spectrum, i.e., they only emit a single color of light.

3. Machine

A laser consists of a gain medium, a mechanism to supply energy to it, and something to provide optical feedback. The gain medium is a material with properties that allow it to amplify light by stimulated emission. Light of a specific wavelength that passes through the gain medium is amplified (increases in power).

2. Cutting Pizza

The word laser started as an acronym for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”; in modern usage “light” broadly denotes electromagnetic radiation of any frequency, not only visible light, hence infrared laser, ultraviolet laser, X-ray laser, and so on.

1. Iron Man Gauntlet

A laser which produces light by itself is technically an optical oscillator rather than an optical amplifier as suggested by the acronym. It has been humorously noted that the acronym LOSER, for “light oscillation by stimulated emission of radiation,” would have been more correct.

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