SciShow Tangents is the lightly competitive knowledge showcase from the geniuses behind the YouTube series SciShow. Every other Tuesday, join Hank Green, Ceri Riley, and Sam Schultz as they try to one-up and amaze each other with weird and funny scientific research... while not getting distracted. There will be tangents about video games, music, weird smells, surprisingly deep insights about life, and of course, poop, but it always comes back to the science.
https://scishow-tangents.simplecast.com
episode 45: Lasers
In all of science, there are very few things conceptually cooler than lasers. A beam of light you can use to blast aliens? Heck yeah! But are lasers actually as cool in reality as they are in science fiction? Probably not! But I guess you'll have to listen to find out for sure.
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[Truth or Fail]
Gold-plated bacteria
Contact lenses that shoot lasers
Lead into gold with lasers
[Trivia Question]
Universal Product Code first scanned in grocery store
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/history-bar-code-180956704/
[Fact Off]
Laser cooking of printed chicken
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jct3f92rIOE
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/3-d-printed-chicken-dinner-cooked-by-lasers/
Laser lightning rod for deflection/protection
https://www.unige.ch/communication/communiques/en/2023/devier-la-foudre-grace-au-paratonnerre-laser
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-022-01139-z
https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/lightning/faq/
http://www.usfcam.usf.edu/cam/exhibitions/1998_12_mccollum/supplemental_didactics/21.uman2.pdf
[Ask the Science Couch]
Long-distance lasers and masers
https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/lasers/hazards
https://spie.org/news/12-09-laser-ranging?SSO=1
http://ccom.unh.edu/theme/lidar
https://www.icrar.org/megamaser/
https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.02523
[Butt One More Thing]
Low-level laser therapy for butt (or any) tendons
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8886125/
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22960-gluteal-tendinopathy
http://www.utahorthopediccenters.com/hip/gluteus-medius-tendinopathy-or-dead-butt-syndrome/