Every couple years, the USA Science and Engineering Festival is held at the convention center in Washington DC. Faculty from biology and physics, including myself, were there to represent American University and show the public some science demonstrations. The main demos were extracting DNA from strawberries and the dynamics of a non-Newtonian fluid (cornstarch and water) when placed in a subwoofer speaker.
Hooked up a Jacob’s Ladder to demonstrate high voltage for PHYS 210: Principles of Physics II.
This very old home-made laser system was gifted to me from Trey Porto at JQI. With some relatively minor tweaks it seems to work! Might start using this as a stand-in until the big laser system arrives.
We have an optical table, nanofibers under vacuum, an 8020 structure built, and some furniture in place. We put some light from a 1064nm laser into the nanofiber and light came out the other side. That means the nanofiber is not broken!