Building A Simple High Voltage Nitrogen Laser (Ft. StyroPyro + giveaway)

when theodore mayman invented the laser in 1960 it changed how we looked at light finding use in everything from corrective eye surgery to analytical dna sequencing and of course even manufacturing they're legit as complex as they might seem there's actually a really simple form of laser that can be built in like a single evening it's called a tea laser it's nothing like your standard laser pointer foil plastic sheet and some supplies from a hardware store is all you really need to build one of these things add the appropriate power supply and it gets you this however don't be deceived by their simplicity deep down tea lasers are evil little black holes of free time but they're totally awesome so i built one let's go [Music] before we begin keysight technologies provided several 4-channel oscilloscopes which i'll be giving away after this video they're also giving away three hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment during their free keysight university event so stick around to the end to see how you can grab one of these sweet puppies and sign up for the keysight university event now the tea and tea laser stands for transversely excited atmospheric which is basically just fancy nerd talk for sparks along the length of an electrode at normal room pressures they're all built approximately the same following this schematic you'll see one shared capacitor plate on the base and two separate capacitor plates up top separated by a lasing gap yet connected through a resistor a formal spark gap bridges over that dielectric in the middle sparks means high voltage so the power source i decided to try this with was a 15 kilovolt supply from a past video of mine man this thing is really turning out to be useful i did a fair bit of reading on the topic including looking at how others had done this in the past and got to work my first attempt used an 8 by 11 sheet of foil a matching projector sheet on top two three by nine foil sheets on top of that and two sections of aluminum l channel on top the l channel sat a high value resistor for the spark app i attached a wire to the bottom foil and just let it hang right above the top foil building it was only half the battle though considering the ladder puts out as uv and we can't normally see uv light that kind of makes the testing and seeing if it works right a little difficult the light has to hit something that'll fluoresce thank god for highlighter ink and water but no this isn't p uh-uh turning it on i blew my eardrums and there were sparks all across the lazing channel but no lazing none at all i tried increasing the spark gap so that more power built up and all that seemed to do was damage my hearing faster and caused the plastic insulator to fail it literally started to melt so after repairing it i reduced the spark gap but widened the lasing gap starting at one millimeter i moved it out in one millimeter increments thinking perhaps that would cause it to lase still no cigar this time i was thinking well hey maybe my electrodes are the problem so i tossed out the aluminum l channel and replaced it with this solid hex bar the hex bar was cut from eight millimeter allen wrenches which uh it turns out is pretty hard to cut i read that this has been successfully used before so i figured um you know i'd give it a try i also replaced my janky spark app with a more permanent lower inductance version built of two steel bolts this time the setup felt good it looked really solid with the hex bar being six inches in length i trimmed the top foil to match and placed it all on a seven inch square base after turning it on the gap finally filled with transverse sparks which is a good sign but still no lazing i tried a few different lacing gaps with two and three millimeters giving the most uniform discharge and sparks are nice but lasers are cooler so i asked my friend styro pyro for some suggestions he uh likes lasers you gotta come up with a way to make an incredibly fast pulse so the lifetime of nitrogen in the excited state is extremely short it's like two or three nanoseconds so having it flat is is a big thing because you're minimizing uh equivalent series inductance you know is that why you need a smaller capacitor so it has a higher like frequency of discharge you can you can make it bigger and have more area but i guess like i don't know if you can see i don't know if you can see this at all yeah you guys saying the electrodes really uh really nicely and smooth there i've spent like a week on it's this is the simplest project dude funny because the same thing happened for me because i just i i kept messing with it i could not get it delays and like every once in a while maybe shoot out one working pulse and it's like oh i got it then it stopped we went on to compare the differences in our setups and what i needed to do to improve mine i ended up flattening out the foil to get rid of all wrinkles and used 500 grit sandpaper on the edges of the hex bar apparently tea lasers are finicky little beasts because now it worked turning it on this time there was a clear laser shining right through the water super cool the beam can also be seen if it hits white paper due to the fluorescent dyes that are used stepping back about three feet or so the beam is actually still fairly focused and this is when i accidentally discovered my shirt apparently fluoresced as well and this was my favorite shot you can clearly see the beam extends out you're looking down the barrel of a nitrogen laser which is also a hint at how it works because electrons leave the aluminum and they smack into the nitrogen which excites it into a higher like quantum mechanical state and then as it starts as the nitrogen starts falling back down to the ground state it releases a uv photon and because if you if you build it correctly you have a lot of excited nitrogen in a row as one photon uh leaves the molecule it it stimulates the other ones to fall out and that you get a big pulse in fact in fact it's actually so good at this you don't even need mirrors now tell me that's not cool you know building this laser has given me a totally whole new appreciation for how lasers work and if you decide to build a tea laser yourself unless you want to join the let's go blind club together make sure you wear a pair of uv blocking safety glasses and since this involves high voltage you know what that means one hand rule it saves your life okay you've learned how to make a lazy bean but honestly why stop there keysight is launching an epic event called keysight university live which is pretty much like christmas morning at tony stark's house not even kidding i'll let my friend daniel from keysight tell you the fine bits you could have a lab like this for free seriously sign up to win over 300 000 and test the measurement gear as part of keysight university live hear from industry experts get a sneak peek at never before seen test gear and win some for yourself sign up now you can use the link in the description down below on march 15th they'll pull their first round of winners and reveal a new series of benchtop gear including signal generators and power supplies so it really makes no sense not to sign up while you're at it go check out keysight's youtube channel because it's full of really good content okay as promised i'll be giving away several of these four channel oscilloscopes here's how you can enter to win one of these sick rides first smash the like button on this video then comment down below with your thoughts on this project and what projects you'd like to see me tackle next i'm also allocating a couple scopes to my patreons as well so choosing to support my work through patreon doubles your chances i'll choose three viewers through the comment section and contact you through their youtube or email so you better respond well as always this video was a complete pleasure to make and hopefully it was a pleasure for you to watch thank you for watching and i'll see you next time you classy cats [Music] you

Channel: Plasma Channel

Views: 358,876

Keywords: “Water bending”, Water bending, controlling elements, Avatar, Plasma, physics, Science, Discovery, High Voltage, “High Voltage”, “Voltage multiplier”, Tesla Coil, Vandergraff Generator, Electrostatic, “static electricity”, Lightning, Electronics, Plasma globe, Plasma Channel, Jay, Plasma Nation, Van Der Graaff, Marx generator, high power, Ozone, Ionic wind, Corona, laser, nitrogen, liquid nitrogen, TEA, StyroPyro, styropyro, tea laser, easy, DIY, how to build

Id: YFkUOPl0tUw

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021