Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of IHEARTRADIOW.
Speaker 2: And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
Speaker 2: and Jerry's here too. And she was making too many
Speaker 2: laser noises, so we asked her to please go on
Speaker 2: you because she did, and I assume she's still making
Speaker 2: laser noises. We just can't hear right now.
Speaker 1: You have a little attitude about it.
Speaker 2: Too, she did. I mean, I was really mean and kurt,
Speaker 2: but she didn't have to be that way back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a one way street, right, it's.
Speaker 2: My way or the highway.
Speaker 1: You know, it's about time we did an episode on lasers.
Speaker 1: This seems like something that we would have tackled in
Speaker 1: those first formative in that first formative decade, and.
Speaker 2: I'm glad we didn't because I think it's good to
Speaker 2: still do like a traditional you know, how X works episode,
Speaker 2: we should do one, And how X works it depends
Speaker 2: on what kind of X you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Ruby used to give us an X when she was little,
Speaker 1: when she was like two years old. If she didn't
Speaker 1: like something, she would do her fingers as an X.
Speaker 2: And she just keeps getting cooler and cooler.
Speaker 1: She forgot that she lost that one along the way.
Speaker 1: I told her to bring that back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1: Uncle Josh likes it.
Speaker 2: That's like talk to the hand, but way better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: All right, So we're talking lasers today, not necessarily X.
Speaker 2: Maybe we will do X someday. Let's find out, okay,
Speaker 2: And everybody knows what a laser is, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I feel like it's one of the
Speaker 1: more like one of those acronyms like scuba that you
Speaker 1: learn when you're like on the playground. M hm. So
Speaker 1: in this case, it stands for light amplification by stimulated
Speaker 1: emission of radiation. And now that I know what a
Speaker 1: laser is and how it works, they kind of nailed
Speaker 1: it with that acronym they did.
Speaker 2: You you can totally forgive them for the B and
Speaker 2: the of because that's a world class acronym.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be lab sere if they included those
Speaker 1: lasers so much cooler.
Speaker 2: Lab se or doesn't. It doesn't have that same ring
Speaker 2: to it as laser.
Speaker 1: Throw me the lab se or gun.
Speaker 2: That someone would say. No. So, lasers are everywhere everybody,
Speaker 2: They're all around you. A lot of them are pointed
Speaker 2: at you right now, you just can't see them. But
Speaker 2: like a UPC code scanner at a supermarket checkout. They
Speaker 2: still have supermarkets, right, Oh yeah, that's right. Everyone goes
Speaker 2: in and empties all of their bank accounts into them
Speaker 2: every week to get suesstenates. Well, when you check out,
Speaker 2: boo boo boop like that, that's actually a laser being triggered.
Speaker 2: You're scanning your UPC code. So lasers are everywhere. They're
Speaker 2: at the supermarket. At least, that doesn't necessarily mean you
Speaker 2: understand them. I didn't understand them until we started to
Speaker 2: research this, did you know.
Speaker 1: And it's really not that hard to wrap your head around.
Speaker 1: Actually I was kind of dreading this. But Dave did
Speaker 1: a great job with this article, sort of like you
Speaker 1: here in the traditional sense, like you said, yep, And
Speaker 1: he does a good job initially by sort of laying
Speaker 1: the groundwork of regular light compared to a laser light.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a great way to start.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, if we're going to talk about lasers, we
Speaker 2: really I mean, we're talking about light. We kind of
Speaker 2: need to go back a couple of steps and say, okay,
Speaker 2: there's different kinds of light, you know, like the light
Speaker 2: we think of as sunlight or a light bulb or
Speaker 2: something like that, what we would call generally white light
Speaker 2: is as a lot of people know, all of the
Speaker 2: colors of the spectrum, the visible light spectrum together coming
Speaker 2: together to form white light.
Speaker 1: That's right, many different wavelengths. But just like you know,
Speaker 1: elementary school science, when you get that prism and your
Speaker 1: little mind is blown, it's still kind of blows my mind.
Speaker 1: You scatter that light into its different wavelengths and it's
Speaker 1: the colors of the rainbow there. But and this is
Speaker 1: something that like I don't think I even realize this,
Speaker 1: even those different wavelengths, it's not a single wavelengths. It's
Speaker 1: still a spectrum of different wavelengths creating the red or
Speaker 1: the blue or the yellow or whatever. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of where we find ourselves, you know, departing in what
Speaker 1: a laser ends at being.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because so for example, the yellow band, what we
Speaker 2: see is yellow, and the visible spectrum occupies the five
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy nanimeter to five hundred and ninety nanimeter range.
Speaker 2: You show up below that, I think you've got what
Speaker 2: red orange, something like that. ROYGBIV, Yeah, I can't remember
Speaker 2: above that you've got blue Green, roy g Green, and
Speaker 2: those just have different wave links. They're all electromagnetic light.
Speaker 2: It's the same thing as a microwave. It's the same
Speaker 2: thing as a radio wave. It's the same thing as
Speaker 2: a gamma ray. It's just the different frequencies make them
Speaker 2: different kinds of energy what we call the visible spectrum.
Speaker 2: The point is is within all those different nanometer wavelengths,
Speaker 2: say from five to seventy to five ninety, there's different
Speaker 2: kinds of yellow. There's different shades of yellow right in
Speaker 2: there across that the spectrum within the spectrum, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, spectrum within the spectrum. Also a great album title.
Speaker 2: That is a great album title, Jeszisch. Maybe you could
Speaker 2: have like a prism with a beam of light coming
Speaker 2: in and then a rainbow coming out the other side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is nineteen sixties for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pyramid even is a prism.
Speaker 1: Yeah. With Isaac Kay's's head floating above it.
Speaker 2: I'm describing the Dark Side of the Moon album cover.
Speaker 1: I know it's just kidding.
Speaker 2: Okay, well you were really throwing me off, you were.
Speaker 2: That was some meta joking right there.
Speaker 1: I have a great pressing of Dark Side of the
Speaker 1: Moon by the way you do. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: had a record press or a guy who does that
Speaker 1: for a living. I was hanging out with him in
Speaker 1: New York with our friend Joey Ciara and these two
Speaker 1: guys who did that, and he said, yeah, some pressings
Speaker 1: like it's done by a human, so you might have
Speaker 1: some records that just sound really awesome because it was
Speaker 1: well done. And I was like yeah, and they're you know,
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty gram. He was like, that's all bunk,
Speaker 1: by the way. He's like, it just makes you feel
Speaker 1: better that it's heavier, and I was like, oh man,
Speaker 1: that's disappointing.
Speaker 2: I do like the heft of a eighty gram.
Speaker 1: Apparently, they said, is that's all just for you to
Speaker 1: make you think it is better because it's heavier.
Speaker 2: It's heavier, so it's worth more.
Speaker 1: All right. So back to lasers. What you just described
Speaker 1: very well, by the way, was regular light wavelength within
Speaker 1: the wavelength. If you talk about the differences of a
Speaker 1: laser light, you're talking about three main differences, in the
Speaker 1: first of which is that single wavelength it's monoc like
Speaker 1: truly monochromatic. That beam of light that a laser is
Speaker 1: or I guess you know, produces Well, no, it's what
Speaker 1: it is is is just a very it's a single wavelength,
Speaker 1: highly highly concentrated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so rather than say a wavelength between five seventy
Speaker 2: and five for being yellow, this is a five hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy two nanometer wavelength that is that specific yellow.
Speaker 2: That's right, and it's it's not it's made up entirely
Speaker 2: of yellow light on the exact same wavelength. That is
Speaker 2: incredibly important. That's a huge, huge difference. Lasers don't occur naturally.
Speaker 2: We've figured out how to make them, and by we,
Speaker 2: I'm including myself in you.
Speaker 1: That's right. The second big difference between laser light and
Speaker 1: regular light is that it's coherent. So not only is
Speaker 1: it just a single wavelength, but the photons of the light,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about where they come into
Speaker 1: play here in a second. Thanks to mister Einstein or
Speaker 1: doctor Einstein, the photons are perfectly in phase with one another.
Speaker 1: So if you look at that wavelength, the peaks and
Speaker 1: the troughs are all perfectly in sync.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and not like they're following the same plane and
Speaker 2: they're just kind of in synct like that like, they're
Speaker 2: upright above each other, right below each other. They're not
Speaker 2: interfering with one another in any way whatsoever.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: And then the last one is that they're colimated, meaning
Speaker 2: they're all traveling in the exact same direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's important. I mean culimated sort of
Speaker 1: a fancy way of saying directional. But as we'll see,
Speaker 1: they all have to be traveling that same direction to
Speaker 1: pick up their little photon buddies.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So essentially what you've got is a very specific
Speaker 2: kind of the exact same kind of light, none of
Speaker 2: which are interfering with the other photons that are coming
Speaker 2: out of the laser, all of which are traveling in
Speaker 2: the same direction, so they do not get in one
Speaker 2: another's way, and they can be combined very very tightly.
Speaker 2: And that's essentially what a laser does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And it all goes back to that
Speaker 1: acronym stimulated emission, the SE and laser. You can't make
Speaker 1: a laser without SE, that's true. You can't spell laser
Speaker 1: without SE, and you can't have a laser without stimulated emission.
Speaker 1: And our buddy Einstein is the guy who sort of
Speaker 1: laid the theoretical groundwork. He didn't go out and build
Speaker 1: a laser. That came later, but he laid the theoretical
Speaker 1: groundwork for all of this back in the ridiculously in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so back in nineteen oh five, most people were like,
Speaker 2: light's a continuous wave, and by proxy, the universe is
Speaker 2: one smooth, continuous thing. In Einstein's like, I don't think
Speaker 2: that's true. I think if you zoom in far enough,
Speaker 2: close enough into the fabric of the universe, you're going
Speaker 2: to see it's actually made of discrete, little little things
Speaker 2: and call them pixels, right, And he's like, if that's true,
Speaker 2: then light can't be one continuous wave either. So I
Speaker 2: think they're actually made up of those little tiny packets
Speaker 2: that I'm going to call photons. And he turned out
Speaker 2: to be right. He had a great equation for it too.
Speaker 2: It's so elegantly simple. That's the thing about Einstein. He
Speaker 2: could come up with like three different things and could
Speaker 2: completely change our understanding of the universe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, this is the Planck Einstein, Einstein, what
Speaker 1: just happened? I was concentrating so heavily. I'm not saying Plank.
Speaker 2: I've heard Plank I think that's how most people say.
Speaker 1: Oh, I've always heard plank.
Speaker 2: Okay, I've heard both, but most of the people I've
Speaker 2: ever heard say plank. But I mean, I run in
Speaker 2: pretty low brow crowds.
Speaker 1: I think the probably the correctest plank, but most people
Speaker 1: do say plank. You're right.
Speaker 2: I like the way that you said it the first time.
Speaker 2: The plank Einstein.
Speaker 1: No, it says Einstein though. Yeah, the Plank Einstein relation,
Speaker 1: which is the energy beach photon is equal to its
Speaker 1: frequency times Plunk's constant e equals HF.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and all Plunk's constant is all it is. It's
Speaker 2: the smallest possible measurement of energy that anything can have
Speaker 2: on like the quantum level. Right, And so Einstein was like, Hey,
Speaker 2: I want to figure out how all this stuff kind
Speaker 2: of interacts because I know that photons interact with electrons.
Speaker 2: I'm just positive of it.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And they were figured that's pretty good. They were figuring out.
Speaker 2: He was figuring out I think other people were at
Speaker 2: the same time that when you have sub atomic particles
Speaker 2: like an electron orbiting an atom, which if you go
Speaker 2: listen to our periodic Table episode, I think we did
Speaker 2: a pretty decent explanation of how you know that symbolism
Speaker 2: or that visualization of it is not very correct. But
Speaker 2: for all intents and purposes for this, let's say that
Speaker 2: these electrons orbit in different orbits around the atom, and
Speaker 2: when a photon hits it that orbit, that electron goes
Speaker 2: up in energy I think for like one hundred nanoseconds typically, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then it says, okay, I want to get back
Speaker 2: to my resting state it's ground state, and it goes
Speaker 2: back to its previous orbital But when it does, it
Speaker 2: poops out a photon.
Speaker 1: You know what's funny? What as earlier when I was
Speaker 1: going over there in my head, I said, poops out
Speaker 1: of photon.
Speaker 2: Sure, I mean you and I we share a brain
Speaker 2: when it comes to toilet humor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's exactly right. So an atom
Speaker 1: is going to absorb that energy, and it can do
Speaker 1: that in a lot of ways, but let's just say
Speaker 1: in this case, it's like some it gets heated up,
Speaker 1: you know, like literally heated up. Those electrons are going
Speaker 1: to jump around and get excited. But once they that
Speaker 1: makes it unstable. But it wants to be stable. So
Speaker 1: when it goes back to that state. You're right, it
Speaker 1: poops out that photon. Einstein saw this, called it spontaneous emission. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this happens all the time all over the place
Speaker 1: in nature. These photons are getting pooped out all over
Speaker 1: the place. But Einstein was like, well, hey, if it
Speaker 1: happens all the time naturally, he theorized, maybe we can
Speaker 1: we can stimulate it to do this. Maybe we can
Speaker 1: make this happen and control that emission.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Because here's the thing, right, Like you say you
Speaker 2: have a photon that hits an atom and knocks an
Speaker 2: electron into the higher energy state, then that electron poops
Speaker 2: out a photon. Well, that electron is just absorbed the photon.
Speaker 2: So another way of looking at it is the photon
Speaker 2: essentially goes into the electron and comes back out the
Speaker 2: other side kind of, but there's only one photon ever,
Speaker 2: one gets absorbed, one's produced. What Einstein figured out is
Speaker 2: with stimulated emission, you can use a photon to create
Speaker 2: another photon without losing the first photon. And if you
Speaker 2: do that a bunch of times, buddy, you can have like, oh,
Speaker 2: like you could make a basket with your shirt and
Speaker 2: fill it with photons.
Speaker 1: If you do it, right, Yeah, I mean he realized
Speaker 1: that photons like to hang out with one another, so
Speaker 1: it doesn't take a lot to get them, you know,
Speaker 1: traveling in a direction and saying, hey, buddy, come with me,
Speaker 1: and it creates this sort of sort of like a snowball,
Speaker 1: like a cascading effect where if you can get them
Speaker 1: in an excited state and stimulate them and have them
Speaker 1: pick up other photons and have them all travel in
Speaker 1: the same direction, you're like halfway toward laser town pretty much.
Speaker 2: You can see the outskirts of town and the light
Speaker 2: shooting up in the sky.
Speaker 1: Yeah you can.
Speaker 2: So yeah, So that's stimulated emission. And the key here
Speaker 2: is you don't have to spend a photon to get
Speaker 2: a photon, right, You can excite the atom in other
Speaker 2: ways as long as it's already in its excited state.
Speaker 2: When the photon comes along, it's going to produce another photon. Now,
Speaker 2: for the purposes of lasers, what's really really important here
Speaker 2: is it is going to produce an exactly identical photon
Speaker 2: as the first one that passes by, right, traveling in
Speaker 2: the same direction, and it's not going to interfere with
Speaker 2: the first one. So they're cohesive, and they're collimated, and
Speaker 2: they're exactly the same. They're monochromatic, which, as we said before,
Speaker 2: those are the things you need for a laser. So
Speaker 2: Einstein figured out back in nineteen seventeen how to make
Speaker 2: a laser, and it was like, you, guys, figure it out.
Speaker 2: I'm going to think about some other stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And if you say, well, wait a minute, I
Speaker 1: thought you said nineteen oh five, like it even took
Speaker 1: Ein Einstein a little while to get there, you know,
Speaker 1: that's right, took a little while. So should we take
Speaker 1: a break.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like a break is imminent.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more lasers, all right. So
Speaker 1: when we left, Einstein did some great work kind of
Speaker 1: laying the groundwork, this theoretical foundation of a laser. And
Speaker 1: then he was like, guys, I like to think of
Speaker 1: things with my brain and say them out loud and
Speaker 1: write them on chalkboards. If you want to build this thing, fine,
Speaker 1: maybe slide me some cash. But I don't do that
Speaker 1: kind of work. So people did though, that followed in
Speaker 1: his footsteps, and in the nineteenth fifties it was a
Speaker 1: physicist named Charles Towns. He worked at Bell Labs and
Speaker 1: he was doing research on microwaves microwave radiation, and he
Speaker 1: was trying to He didn't know it yet, but he was.
Speaker 1: He was halfway to laser town because he was trying
Speaker 1: to find ways to concentrate a beam of microwaves.
Speaker 2: In this case, what's nuts is this guy figured it out.
Speaker 2: He just basically tinkered around and made his own version
Speaker 2: of a laser. But rather than using light, he used
Speaker 2: microwave beams. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he built like a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he just he used ammonia adams. He put him
Speaker 2: in a sealed chamber and he got them to essentially
Speaker 2: emit microwave radiation that he was able to concentrate into
Speaker 2: a beam. Right, So that cascading effect happened just like
Speaker 2: we discussed before, and essentially the only difference is it
Speaker 2: wasn't a light, it was a microwave beam. And to
Speaker 2: test it, he aimed it at the front pocket of
Speaker 2: a passing colleague, Percy Spencer, who happened to have a
Speaker 2: chocolate bar in the front pocket, and he melted it and
Speaker 2: Percy Spencer never forgave him because that was his favorite
Speaker 2: short sleeve, button down shirt.
Speaker 1: I think we talked about this, did we do one
Speaker 1: of microwaves. Yeah, okay, well that would be exactly where
Speaker 1: we talked about it then, probably.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they weren't colleagues. I just made that part up.
Speaker 2: But that was a that was for you, buddy.
Speaker 1: Oh no, wait, there was a chocolate thing though, what right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that happened. But separately, I think Spencer
Speaker 2: was in the presence of some microwave generator and his
Speaker 2: chocolate bar melted. And now that went on to invent microwaves.
Speaker 2: This thing was totally different. It's just yeah, it just
Speaker 2: brought Percy Spencer to mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like it. So he literally called this a mazer,
Speaker 1: a microwave amplified stimulated emission of radiation. He teamed up
Speaker 1: with a guy. It was a colleague named Arthur Shallow,
Speaker 1: and he said, let me see if we can do
Speaker 1: the same thing with light, and we'll call it an
Speaker 1: optical maser. And everyone was like, buddy, it's right there
Speaker 1: in front of your face, like, come on, just get there.
Speaker 2: I think it was theor myman I like to call
Speaker 2: him my man who actually came up with the laser.
Speaker 2: He built the first functional laser in nineteen.
Speaker 1: Sixty and came up with a name.
Speaker 2: I think he did Okay. Up to this point, they
Speaker 2: were all theoretical and my man was the first one
Speaker 2: to actually build one, and he used a ruby crystal,
Speaker 2: which at the time I think had already been dismissed.
Speaker 2: People were like, you can't use that to make a laser.
Speaker 2: And he's like, let me try again, and he did
Speaker 2: some more calculations. He's like, the ruby's actually going to
Speaker 2: be great. So he used a pink ruby crystal as
Speaker 2: what's called the gain medium.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's like the material lasing material that you would
Speaker 1: use exactly.
Speaker 2: That's where the atoms that you get excited are all stored.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So he surrounded that crystal with a with a flash.
Speaker 1: It was a coil shaped flash bulb. So that's that's
Speaker 1: going to be the thing that you know, the heat
Speaker 1: or whatever or the light that stimulates the initial reactions
Speaker 1: the pump. Sure, and then the two ends of that
Speaker 1: crystal were painted reflective silver. So everything is sort of
Speaker 1: kind of trapped in there together, encouraging all those photons
Speaker 1: to bounce around and get a little wild and create
Speaker 1: more photons and say, hey, you know we're doing something here,
Speaker 1: guys and all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all of these photons came out at six hundred
Speaker 2: and ninety four nanometers, which I guess is the precise
Speaker 2: wavelength of ruby red.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 2: And he showed that like there, there, here's a laser.
Speaker 2: Check it out. Let me see your face. Basically, I
Speaker 2: think was how he showed it off right. He would
Speaker 2: just wave it in people's faces.
Speaker 1: That's why he's my man.
Speaker 2: So that was it. I mean, that was the first
Speaker 2: laser that and it was what you want to say,
Speaker 2: like it was as easy as that. Of course that's
Speaker 2: not easy, but the principle of it is kind of
Speaker 2: like you said, it's simple to understand, which is great.
Speaker 2: Like we did one on the breathalyzer, and it is
Speaker 2: so ridiculously complicated. It's more complicated than a laser by far.
Speaker 1: I hated that one.
Speaker 2: I did too.
Speaker 1: That was a long period of time ago.
Speaker 2: I remember we picked it, we started researching, and I
Speaker 2: was like.
Speaker 1: This sucks.
Speaker 2: Wait, why am I not understanding this? It was just
Speaker 2: so complex. Let's never talk about it again.
Speaker 1: I think we just wanted the explanation to be like
Speaker 1: blow into tube smells beer exactly.
Speaker 2: You just make a bunch of like drunk jokes.
Speaker 1: Exactly, all right, So that that was the first laser,
Speaker 1: Like you said, he use that ruby to begin with.
Speaker 1: But there are all sorts of gain mediums. There can
Speaker 1: be liquids, there can be gases, and we should probably
Speaker 1: go over the five main types of laser now, starting
Speaker 1: with like if you've ever been for tattoo removal or
Speaker 1: like had a skin cancer with laser removal, they're using
Speaker 1: a solid state laser in that case, and it's called
Speaker 1: solid state because they're using a solid crystal or a
Speaker 1: glass or something like that. Mix it up with a
Speaker 1: little with a gain medium like well, it's they're all
Speaker 1: rare earth elements like chromium or something like that. Neodymium
Speaker 1: is that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's also a bitterum you abitterum man I even
Speaker 2: looked it up, udbium atbium.
Speaker 1: Aterbium I betze, right, that's a that's why that looks funny.
Speaker 2: It is great though, why t t E r b
Speaker 2: I U m yatterbium I got it And all of
Speaker 2: those Basically they dope that say, like you could still
Speaker 2: use ruby, but you would create like a ruby crystal
Speaker 2: that's doped with these impurities that you've selected based on
Speaker 2: their say like reflective properties, or they're phosphorescent properties. These
Speaker 2: things can generate some photons really efficiently, and they're going
Speaker 2: to generate them in exactly the wavelength that you want. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a solid state laser. I follows in the tradition
Speaker 2: of that original Mamayan's laser from nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: You know, Emily knows not much about football, doesn't care,
Speaker 1: but there's always a few plays that she knows of,
Speaker 1: and it's always very funny. Patrick Mahomes is one of them,
Speaker 1: and every time she'd hears of him or anything, she
Speaker 1: just goes my homes very nice, sort of like my man.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I'm with you. That's a great way to
Speaker 2: say it. Nice.
Speaker 1: One thing I wanted to point out though about these
Speaker 1: different types of blazers is all of them are that
Speaker 1: they use different types of blazers according to whatever application
Speaker 1: they want to use it for. So it's not just like, hey,
Speaker 1: these are cool, let's use let's use this crystal with
Speaker 1: this doping agent because we just think it sounds awesome.
Speaker 1: It's all highly specific to what you want to end
Speaker 1: up using it for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like even like tattoo removal you said, which I'm
Speaker 2: in the process of I'm getting towards the end there, buddy.
Speaker 1: How's it looking pretty gone?
Speaker 2: Pretty light? Yeah? It start? Yeah, I mean you can
Speaker 2: still see it, especially if you walk up to it,
Speaker 2: but you could also miss it if you weren't looking
Speaker 2: for it's getting like that, Just like while that guy's
Speaker 2: got mildew on his arm.
Speaker 1: I took the other tack. As you have seen recently
Speaker 1: when we were on tour, I had a probably two
Speaker 1: inch by two inch tattoo that I covered with half
Speaker 1: of an arm sleeve.
Speaker 2: I didn't see it. You haven't shown it to me? Oh?
Speaker 1: How was was I always in long sleeves?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And I forgot to ask. I actually thought about
Speaker 2: that when we were researching this. I was like, I
Speaker 2: haven't seen chucks do tattoo.
Speaker 1: Well, i'll I'll take my shirt off in front of
Speaker 1: you soon.
Speaker 2: Okay. But even with the tattoo removal ones. They have
Speaker 2: different types of solid state lasers. The gain medium is different. Right.
Speaker 2: There's one called the n d YAG laser. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: a really common one. Neodymium doped yetrium. Yeah, aluminum garnet.
Speaker 2: That's the gain medium. And that's for I don't remember
Speaker 2: what that one's for I think different color like regular
Speaker 2: color tattoos, whereas like if it's green, to use a
Speaker 2: different kind of in gain medium.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it is extremely specific.
Speaker 1: All right, well, can we move on to gas lasers.
Speaker 2: I think it's time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So obviously they're going to use gases or gain medium.
Speaker 1: It could be a carbon dioxide laser, it could be argne,
Speaker 1: could be crypton if you're really into comic books. And
Speaker 1: these are different than solid state layers. Obviously, in solid
Speaker 1: state the atoms are excited by a light source. In
Speaker 1: this case, it's an electrical current, and it's going to
Speaker 1: get them going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it gets them excited. There's all sorts of stuff
Speaker 2: you can use with gas lasers, but probably one of
Speaker 2: the most famous one is using a carbon dioxide as
Speaker 2: the gain medium, and those things can get those photons going.
Speaker 2: You can weld with it. That's how powerful these lasers can.
Speaker 2: You can weld metal with that stuff. And then at
Speaker 2: the same time, if you use a different gas, you
Speaker 2: might have a eximer laser. You can actually break the
Speaker 2: bonds that hold molecules together. You can alter cells, you
Speaker 2: can destroy tissue. But it uses UV lights, so it
Speaker 2: doesn't produce heat. So that's how you can use that
Speaker 2: on someone's skin without burning them, but still say removing
Speaker 2: like a squamous cell or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or if you've ever heard of something being laser cut,
Speaker 1: then it's probably going to be a gas laser doing
Speaker 1: that business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hopefully that you didn't hear about that from a
Speaker 2: squama cell being removed.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: There's also fiber lasers. These are very special lasers. I
Speaker 2: don't know how they found this out, but scientists concluded
Speaker 2: that the cloaks usually or the textiles found with bog bodies,
Speaker 2: have some sort of magical properties that if you use
Speaker 2: them as a gain medium, they make really great lasers.
Speaker 2: Hence fiber lasers.
Speaker 1: Right, But in this case they're used in conjunction with
Speaker 1: a fiber optic cable. And so these are obviously have
Speaker 1: long been used in telecommunications and stuff like that. And
Speaker 1: because they are used in conjunction with an actual cable,
Speaker 1: they're very very efficient. Convert more than fifty percent of
Speaker 1: the electricity that's input into light. But that d YAG
Speaker 1: laser has about a three percent efficiency rate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty efficient. That's another way that lasers are
Speaker 2: part of your everyday life. If you have fiber Internet,
Speaker 2: like you have a laser on one end that your
Speaker 2: ISP is using to send communications or encoded information along
Speaker 2: a fiber optic cable, and your modem is basically a
Speaker 2: laser receiver that translates it into whatever your router needs
Speaker 2: to explain it to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that man, that breaks my brain like vinyl records,
Speaker 1: does you know?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It's pretty cool though, And that's the thing. So
Speaker 2: it's just like when radio with radio waves, we figured
Speaker 2: out how to encode information, and radio waves we figured
Speaker 2: out how to do that with light. It's just lasers
Speaker 2: are way more efficient. They can travel way longer than
Speaker 2: radio waves can. And apparently they're starting to look into
Speaker 2: this to transmit information between the Earth and the Moon. Well, boy,
Speaker 2: so you'll just be able to you'll have basically not
Speaker 2: even fiber optic Internet, you'll have laser Internet on the moon.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: I thought. I think that's wow too. Yeah, what about
Speaker 2: liquid lasers or die lasers? I should probably say, because
Speaker 2: you played that so straight, my explanation of what the
Speaker 2: gain medium is for fiber lasers that I just made
Speaker 2: that up.
Speaker 1: Everybody, Oh, I fall victim again.
Speaker 2: Did you thought that they used the cloaks from bog
Speaker 2: bodies for that.
Speaker 1: Man, I don't all of this stuff is so brain breaking.
Speaker 1: Nothing nothing. Would You could say human feces and I'd
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, of.
Speaker 2: Course that'd be man, that'd be gross. But I'll bet
Speaker 2: you could. I think you could use anything with atoms
Speaker 2: that's excitable to potentially make a laser.
Speaker 1: You've become such a good straight person that it's just
Speaker 1: hard to tell anymore.
Speaker 2: It's hard to tell with you too, Hey, thanks, Yeah,
Speaker 2: thank you. Uh.
Speaker 1: Liquid lasers or dye lasers, these are sort of brain
Speaker 1: breaking to these organic dyes as the gain medium, which
Speaker 1: is kind of crazy to think about. But each die,
Speaker 1: like uh, will produce a different laser light because they're
Speaker 1: going to have, you know, because it's a color, like
Speaker 1: a different wavelength.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And these are really cool because you can actually tune
Speaker 1: them to a very you can manipulate them and tune
Speaker 1: them within a very specific range for specific uses.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So one laser can be used for all sorts
Speaker 2: of different things, which is I'm sure quite cost efficient.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the downsides of solid state lasers.
Speaker 2: It's like one thing you can be with one laser.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Although That.
Speaker 2: Would be cool if like it's just a cartridge you
Speaker 2: can pop out and put in a new a new crystal. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that'd be sweet.
Speaker 1: They should work on that.
Speaker 2: They have to be, you know, like the cost of
Speaker 2: lasers have come down tremendously. I'm sure we'll eventually get there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just ask my cat, my cats with an us.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about but that. We're kind of at
Speaker 2: that point. Do you play with your cats with laser pointers? No?
Speaker 1: I have, but they always get lost because they're always small.
Speaker 2: Oh gotcha? Gotcha? Well that is actually a kind of laser.
Speaker 2: That's why they call them laser pointers. They're the weakest laser.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But they use diodes, which are two different materials that
Speaker 2: when you put them together with a place where they interface,
Speaker 2: creates an electron exchange and hence a flow of electrons
Speaker 2: and that creates electricity. So that's what these things are
Speaker 2: powered by. This is the way that the light. Photons
Speaker 2: get made from the excited atoms, and they're super cheap.
Speaker 2: They're not very powerful, and that means that over a
Speaker 2: fairly short distance I think like hundreds of meters, they
Speaker 2: basically they're not a tiny point any longer Yeah, And
Speaker 2: I was looking into this because when I hear laser pointers,
Speaker 2: I think of jerks like trying to shine in the
Speaker 2: light of an airline pilot.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: Sure, that's a real problem. Actually, I think it happens
Speaker 2: a couple thousand times a year in the US alone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, concerts too, people do that stuff.
Speaker 2: Sure. The reason you're not supposed to do that with
Speaker 2: airline pilots is because by the time it reaches the cockpit,
Speaker 2: it has spread out so much that it's so man
Speaker 2: it's like a huge ball of light. Yeah, that is
Speaker 2: so bright in the cockpit that they can't even see
Speaker 2: the instruments anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it's not like you're just putting like a little
Speaker 2: dot on somebody's cheek. You are blinding everybody in the cockpit. Right.
Speaker 2: Then it's a huge problem that you really should not do.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And also, what's funny about messing with someone doing
Speaker 1: a very important, dangerous job where hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 1: lives are at stake. Yeah, let's mess with that person.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I think everyone's parents should sit them down
Speaker 2: and say, yeah, let's talk about laser pointers, because you
Speaker 2: probably aren't grasping what a problem this is.
Speaker 1: Agreed. Well, that's a weak one. Those diode lasers are
Speaker 1: semiconductor lasers. But since the very beginning, science has tried
Speaker 1: to make the more powerful lasers and they have a
Speaker 1: pretty great job at it. We'll go over some of these.
Speaker 1: But you measure in a laser by how quickly that
Speaker 1: laser is emitting the energy, so it's jewels of energy
Speaker 1: emitted per second. They measure that in watts, and they
Speaker 1: figured out pretty early on that a continuous beam of
Speaker 1: light emits a constant amount of energy over time. So
Speaker 1: they were like, hey, I bet we can make these
Speaker 1: even more powerful if we cut that off very quickly,
Speaker 1: over and over and over and admit pulses of energy
Speaker 1: because it builds up and it just gets stronger and stronger.
Speaker 1: And they tried it out and it really worked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pulse lasers right, because, like you said, a traditional laser,
Speaker 2: it's the same amount of energy the whole time the
Speaker 2: beam is on the pulse laser, it's kind of like
Speaker 2: stopping up the uh, the beam of light, so that
Speaker 2: it just the energy builds up behind it and then
Speaker 2: you open it up again and when you release it,
Speaker 2: it's this ultra concentrated beam of energy, and it's it's
Speaker 2: mind by uggling. How fast this happens so fast that
Speaker 2: your puny brain just sees it as one constant beam
Speaker 2: of light. Yeah, we don't have the technology to slow
Speaker 2: it down enough. I don't think to see the pulsing
Speaker 2: because we're talking billions, trillions, quadrillions, quintillions of a second.
Speaker 2: How frequently those the thing is pulsing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's incredible. I think they first demonstrated that in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one with that Ruby laser, and I think
Speaker 1: they ended up with one hundred nanosecond burst in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one, which is pretty impressive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, because a nanosecond is a billionth of
Speaker 2: a second.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so in nineteen sixty one they were able to
Speaker 1: get that first laser by pulsing it up to one
Speaker 1: thousand times more powerful than my man's device.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This was a year after he built that first laser, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: So I think that was when you say one hundred
Speaker 2: nanosecond bursts. I saw that. With the tech that they're
Speaker 2: using now, nanosecond pulses are called giant pulses. Yeah, seriously,
Speaker 2: that's what they consider them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and those are quintillions of a second, which is
Speaker 1: hard to even wrap your head around for sure.
Speaker 2: Right, So these things, these pulses are just like that's
Speaker 2: it also, Chuck, I think goes to show you how
Speaker 2: quickly energy builds up in the chamber that where the
Speaker 2: beam is released from that it's it's like creating a
Speaker 2: thousand times or ten thousand times or however many times
Speaker 2: stronger beam just from backing it up in like one
Speaker 2: quintillionth of a second. Yeah, sure, you want to take
Speaker 2: a break.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's take a break, and let's talk about just
Speaker 1: sort of real world uses and what's going on out there.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, Chuck, there's some there's some lasers that are
Speaker 2: just super powerful that are being built right now. Of course,
Speaker 2: physicists are like, let's see how powerful we can make something.
Speaker 2: There's one at the University of Michigan called zeus Zetiwa
Speaker 2: Equivalent Ultra Short Pulse Laser System. And then there's one
Speaker 2: in the UK that's being built called the Vulcan Laser.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and these, I mean, the one in the UK
Speaker 1: has a power of five hundred million forty what light bulbs,
Speaker 1: well forty well, yeah, that's true, that's not much. And
Speaker 1: the Zeus can generate a pulse of light that's twenty
Speaker 1: five quintillions of a second long.
Speaker 2: And so but wait, how much energy does it release?
Speaker 1: Three petawats baby, which is one hundred times the total
Speaker 1: electrical output of the entire world in one quick burst.
Speaker 2: So these things are they're like, they're so powerful and
Speaker 2: energetic that they're one of the main things they're going
Speaker 2: to be used for is to study what it's like
Speaker 2: inside a black hole or a star or something like that.
Speaker 2: That's that's like what they're able to recreate and see
Speaker 2: what happens when it bounces off of an apple or
Speaker 2: something like that. What happens when you bounce a black
Speaker 2: hole off of an apple?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's basically why they're trying to create these
Speaker 1: this powerful. It's not so they can blow up the
Speaker 1: Death Star, even though that's a good case use. It's so, yeah,
Speaker 1: so they can recreate like the energy and the inside
Speaker 1: of a star and find out the mysteries of the
Speaker 1: universe basically exactly.
Speaker 2: There's another thing you can use really really powerful lasers for,
Speaker 2: and that's nuclear fusion. And we did a whole episode
Speaker 2: on nuclear fusion, I think in twenty nineteen that was
Speaker 2: one of my favorites of all time, and it's this
Speaker 2: whole thing that's the promise of basically free, unlimited energy
Speaker 2: that you can power anything with with almost like what
Speaker 2: you're getting out is way more than what you're putting in.
Speaker 2: And it's essentially where you take light nuclei and fuse
Speaker 2: them together to create a heavy nuclei and a lot
Speaker 2: of energy is released. It's just we haven't quite figured
Speaker 2: it out. Well. You need like plasma concentrations. These are
Speaker 2: plasma lasers, and apparently in twenty twenty two at the
Speaker 2: Lawrence Livermore Lab, they use one hundred and ninety two
Speaker 2: of these lasers to essentially create the world's first nuclear
Speaker 2: fusion reaction that produced more energy than was put in.
Speaker 2: There was a net gain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they called that the Right Brothers moment as far
Speaker 1: as lasers go, sure, because you got a net gain
Speaker 1: for the first time. They focus those lasers at a
Speaker 1: capsule the size of a peppercorn, and that did it.
Speaker 1: And I bet that was a great day in that lab.
Speaker 2: I'm sure. I mean, once we get to nuclear fusion,
Speaker 2: that's that's going to change absolutely everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: So you can use it for nuclear fusion. You can
Speaker 2: use really great lasers to recreate different, crazy exotic aspects
Speaker 2: of the universe. There's also way more pedestrian uses for lasers,
Speaker 2: like we said barcodes, fiber optic communication. But they're like
Speaker 2: when you're start to look around, lasers are everywhere. Essentially,
Speaker 2: anything you can bounce light off of or that that
Speaker 2: will absorb light you can use a laser for for
Speaker 2: some application or other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, they're all over the medical industry for
Speaker 1: in all kinds of ways. I think pretty early on
Speaker 1: they were like, hey, these using a laser to cut
Speaker 1: into the human body is way better than a scalpel. Sure,
Speaker 1: it's way more precise, there's less damage on the tissue
Speaker 1: it self kind of self cauterizes as it goes, So
Speaker 1: it's going to be sterilizing the tissue that surrounds it.
Speaker 1: It's going to be less blood loss, you're going to
Speaker 1: heal up quicker. So that's there. I mean, scalpels are
Speaker 1: still around, but you know, lasers are the way to go.
Speaker 2: I saw that there's a brain tumor laser procedure that
Speaker 2: uses a five millimeter hole in the skull and you
Speaker 2: get discharged the next day. That's how accurate and amazing
Speaker 2: these things are. Plus also, it's way easier to attach
Speaker 2: to a robot than to give a robot a scalpel
Speaker 2: to use.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hate to bring it up again, but that
Speaker 1: was just on an episode of The Pit, that exact.
Speaker 2: Case use that you just mentioned, the laser tumor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the tiny hole in the skull.
Speaker 2: We started watching it, I gave it another try, you
Speaker 2: me and I did, and it's it is pretty good
Speaker 2: and engrossing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, engross it is. Yeah, and I figured out too
Speaker 1: watching last night, I kind of forgot the reason why
Speaker 1: I was saying. There's so much of like of Noah
Speaker 1: Wiley over explaining everything to all the younger doctors and
Speaker 1: residences because it's a teaching hospital.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go, which is.
Speaker 1: A great vehicle to explain whatever the heck is going
Speaker 1: on to the viewer at home, you know, yep, for sure.
Speaker 1: All right, So back to medicals, since we're talking about
Speaker 1: the PIT. If you ever had an endoscope, that's you
Speaker 1: know when they put a long flexible tube down your
Speaker 1: throat a lot of times, or up your nose or
Speaker 1: who knows what holes they can put them into these days, it.
Speaker 2: Depends if it's a rubber hose, you know where that goes.
Speaker 1: That's right, Vinny. Essentially you can access these tough to
Speaker 1: reach areas with these tiny little tubes, and in this case,
Speaker 1: you can have a laser attached to it and send
Speaker 1: it in there to shrink a tumor like you were
Speaker 1: talking about.
Speaker 2: Right, And then you can also use them to do
Speaker 2: things like destroy the epidermis and then heat up the
Speaker 2: dermis underneath to get rid of like spots or something
Speaker 2: like that. For all sorts of esthetic dermatological applications.
Speaker 1: Yeah, cosmetic stuff.
Speaker 2: YEP, tattoo removal, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Laser, what about lask Yeah, Lasik.
Speaker 2: Is a big one that has become vastly improved as
Speaker 2: lasers and robots have improved. I think it was first
Speaker 2: started at first became approved in the US and nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine, and since then it's gotten really good. I
Speaker 2: think ninety percent of people who get Lasik have between
Speaker 2: twenty twenty and twenty forty vision afterward. And it's like
Speaker 2: the pool of people who are candidates for it are
Speaker 2: is pretty wide. It's not like, yeah, if you can
Speaker 2: if you need just like those magnifying readers that you
Speaker 2: buy at the pharmacy. You're gonna Lasik's gonna benefit. You know,
Speaker 2: you can have like pretty bad myopia and still benefit
Speaker 2: from it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in this case, they use the laser to reshape
Speaker 1: the cornea. Didn't you debate laser at one point?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm still thinking about it. But my vision we're
Speaker 2: basically at an age where your vision changes fairly rapidly
Speaker 2: and you want it to stabilize or else you'd get
Speaker 2: lasik once and then you'd end up needing glasses when
Speaker 2: your vision degrades again.
Speaker 1: I think Emily has been debating it to a little
Speaker 1: bit lately. I'm not sure why.
Speaker 2: I look into it and I was convinced, like this
Speaker 2: is this is pretty safe and effective, and yeah, yeah
Speaker 2: I would do it. I'm just not there yet.
Speaker 1: I feel like when I've seen you lately, you're having
Speaker 1: trouble with a contact.
Speaker 2: Lens because it's been wintertime and dry. Uh it makes
Speaker 2: them like it makes it easier for it to like
Speaker 2: fold over something like that. Popca sucks.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: There's also weapons. Of course, you can use lasers for weapons.
Speaker 2: Apparently the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force are
Speaker 2: developing laser weapons to different different levels of success, but
Speaker 2: they're definitely working on them, not to necessarily like you know,
Speaker 2: mow doown troops, but to say, blow up a drone
Speaker 2: or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're called directed energy systems. Some of them attached
Speaker 1: to like a turret on a ship. Those seem to
Speaker 1: work pretty well for like you said, like taking down
Speaker 1: a drone or something like that.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: They have others. I think the army has one fifth
Speaker 1: to kill a WATT that's on an armored fighting vehicle,
Speaker 1: but that hasn't done so well because you know, for
Speaker 1: a laser weapon to be pretty effective, it has to
Speaker 1: be super tightly focused and pretty locked down. And they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're driving this thing around and it's not very accurate, right.
Speaker 2: And that's the Striker armored fighting vehicle, Striker with a Y. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like they look to G. I. Joe stuff to
Speaker 2: come up with ms for it.
Speaker 1: For sure.
Speaker 2: There's also this one's pretty sweet too. It's laser cooling.
Speaker 2: And there's also so many different applications, like you can
Speaker 2: you can track soil moisture from space to see how
Speaker 2: bad a route is. You can track how badly ice
Speaker 2: is receding in the in the polar areas. You can
Speaker 2: you can do everything with with lasers. They're really great
Speaker 2: in case that hasn't gotten across so far, but this one,
Speaker 2: to me is just amazingly cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no pun intended laser cooling. What they're doing is
Speaker 1: basically kind of freezing and at them or molecule in place.
Speaker 1: It's also called a particle trap, and it's the same
Speaker 1: sort of physics of stimulated emission, but kind of been reverse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when an atom poops out a photon that kind
Speaker 2: of pushes it in the opposite direction that the photon's traveling.
Speaker 2: They figured out that they can use lasers to keep
Speaker 2: to basically balance that out. So these things are still
Speaker 2: producing photons, they're still doing their thing. They're in energetic
Speaker 2: states and oscillating and doing all sorts of stuff like
Speaker 2: they're supposed to, but they're just not moving around in
Speaker 2: space while they're doing it. Yeah, So they're essentially they're
Speaker 2: just it's like a tractor beam holding it where you
Speaker 2: want it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just slows it down such that it's basically stopped.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's still doing its thing. It's not moving
Speaker 2: around while it's doing it right. So, now that you
Speaker 2: have an atom trapped, you can do something like this
Speaker 2: is the future of atomic clocks. You can measure the
Speaker 2: oscillations oscillations of that one specific atom so precisely that
Speaker 2: atomic clocks are about to be just ridiculously more reliable
Speaker 2: than the atomic clocks today, which I think we can
Speaker 2: all agree are pretty reliable. So that's a huge groundbreaking
Speaker 2: use for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I mean it's easier to study something
Speaker 1: that's sitting still exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now that I think about it, that basically overcomes
Speaker 2: Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, where you can't measure something and know
Speaker 2: where it is at the exact same time. Apparently Heisenberg
Speaker 2: didn't think of lasers.
Speaker 1: That's a nerdiest sentence you've ever said. Oh, come to
Speaker 1: think of.
Speaker 2: It, you got anything else?
Speaker 1: I got nothing else that you know, there's obviously a
Speaker 1: lot more about it. I think that was a good,
Speaker 1: good old fashioned overview of lasers.
Speaker 2: Great man, And since Chuck said old fashioned, he just
Speaker 2: accidentally triggered listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this an answer to a question.
Speaker 1: I love it when we put out a question we
Speaker 1: get answered. We were talking about color psychology, and I
Speaker 1: wondered because I have a African American church around the
Speaker 1: corner from me.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, that purple.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, purple, And we heard from a listener. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm writing to share some insight regarding the morning colors
Speaker 1: at the nearby church. While traditions can vary between African
Speaker 1: American churches, I hope the following information is helpful. In
Speaker 1: the twenty first century African American traditions, it is common
Speaker 1: for individuals attending a funeral to where the deceased person's
Speaker 1: favorite color, which is what I thought might be happening.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: In some cases, all and attendance are encouraged to do so,
Speaker 1: while in others it's reserved for family members. Regarding the
Speaker 1: use of purple, specifically, this color is typically associated with
Speaker 1: royalty in Jesus Christ. If you consistently see purple at
Speaker 1: the church, it may be it may signify recognition of
Speaker 1: the deceased returning to God, or maybe just the person's
Speaker 1: favorite color. So I truly appreciate your program allows me
Speaker 1: to stay present and provides a welcome escape from the
Speaker 1: daily news cycle. I look forward to becoming just a
Speaker 1: tadbit smarter as I continue to be an enthusiastic listener. Corgially, Teresa,
Speaker 1: what a lovely email.
Speaker 2: That was a great email, Chorisa, thank you very much
Speaker 2: for it, and now your mystery solved.
Speaker 1: Chuck, that's right.
Speaker 2: We love emails that solved mysteries that we were wondering about.
Speaker 2: So if you've got a solution to one of our mysteries,
Speaker 2: we would love to hear it. You can also write
Speaker 2: in for any other reason. Just send your email to
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Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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