Free snacks with purchase of new equipment: it’s a thing in optics research labs. Thorlabs started including boxes of “Lab Snacks” whenever there was extra room in a flat-rate shipment. Optics researchers are of course completely non-susceptible to inducements of this sort. Yet now, coincidentally, Newport Optics

Petri dish art by Xiao Hui Lau [http://xiaohuilau.com/2015/07/a-yeasty-4th-of-july/] Hui (pronounced “Hway”) explains: > I present you with possibly one of the more complicated pieces I’ve done so far. This is a special kind of agar (CHROMagar) plate featuring yeast! The

This seemed like a good day to post some rainbow laser modes! Light in a circular cavity makes a variety of standing wave patterns, some of which look like flowers, wagon wheels, or even tie-fighter spaceships. These images are from my simulations of the light in the cavities of

Our new 3D lab printer makes strange Gothic support scaffolding.

In the grand science geek tradition, proposal success is often celebrated by the ritual baking of themed cupcakes. NASA funded my phase 1 proposal to build holographic laser tweezers for the International Space Station! Holographic laser tweezers are about as cool as they sound - beams of laser light that can