Video Demonstrations in

Lasers and Optics

With MIT Professor

Shaoul “Ziggy” Ezekiel

Lasers today are being used in an ever-increasing number of applications. In fact, there is hardly a field that has not been touched by the laser. Lasers are playing key roles in the home, office, hospital, as well as in the laboratory.

File written by Adobe Photoshop® 4.0 To learn about lasers and related optics, one usually takes a course or two, or acquires the necessary information from books and journal articles. To make this learning more exciting, and, one hopes, more understandable, one needs to see some of the basic phenomena involved.

To fill this need, Professor Ezekiel has videotaped 48 demonstrations that illustrate most of the fundamental phenomena relating to lasers and physical optics. The demonstrations are conveniently grouped in ten videocassettes. By using split-screen inserts and a wide range of video-recording capabilities, it is possible to show real-time effects in lasers and optics with the simultaneous manipulation of the components that cause these effects. In this way, one can see effects in close up that would be difficult, if not impossible, to display in front of an audience or in the classroom.

Click here for Quicktime sample (850K .mov file)

The experimental setups are made simple enough to follow and ample references are given for background reading. In addition, several puzzles are left for the viewer to solve.

Individual Videocassettes

Overview of Demonstrations in Lasers and Optics
Optics: Polarization of Light and Polarization Manipulation
Optics: Reflection at Dielectric Interfaces
Optics: Two-Beam Interference
Optics: Multiple Beam Interference
Optics: Fraunhofer and Fresnel Diffraction
Optics: Propogation in Optical Fibers
Laser Fundamentals I
Laser Fundamentals II
Laser Fundamentals III

Special introductory offer!