Stuff like this is what motivates people to become biotechnologists. Making whatever you want, playing with organisms and modern technology creating something that sounds like magic

Thanks for this. Almost 40 years ago in 8th grade I had the assignment to 'design' a biological creature. I had been obsessed with dye lasers from a library book on how to make your own (I later dug into research and Amateur Scientist articles), and imagined a creature with a biolaser built in, with a flash lamp pumped with the biology of an electric eel, with fluorescent liquid similar to a jellyfish, biolenses of a squid's eye, and partially reflective material similar to a cat's iris or the skin of some fish. The teacher was very critical and said it was so improbable. But that wasn't the assignment, and I remained convinced all this time that all the components were possible, with occasional flashes of vindication coming out, including this one. I still have the desire to build a dye laser so I will have to pop it a little higher in my project list.

the fact your laser made of "trash" worked better means the fates have decided you are a garbage bender now. you made too many amazing things from scrap that it's your medium now. o7 keep up the amazing work

Neat stuff! The rail laser is crazy, never seen anything like it.

i absolutely love how you discurage from building the laser but still provide all the details "just in case"

this brings a whole new meaning to flesh light

I have worked with dye lasers and want to share some insights: - You do not need UV light to pump Rhodamine 6G. The frequency-doubled output of a Nd:YAG laser (532 nm) is typically used and is much more efficient since the quantum defect to the emission wavelengths is small. - A pumped stagnant dye solution will quickly get trapped in states that are unresponsive to pump light. The dye solution is therefore typically circulated so that the dye molecules have time to return to the ground state before being pumped again. - The optimal dye concentration depends on the length of the cuvette with longer cuvettes needing less concentration. The concentration also shifts the tuning range of the dye with higher concentrations shifting to higher wavelengths. - The surfaces of the cuvette can themselves act like a laser resonator, resulting in an unwanted beam. The cuvette is typically vertically tilted to steer that beam away from the intentional one. - The positioning of the cylindrical focal lens is quite important as you have correctly identified. However, tilting the lens like that results in aberrations that lead to uneven illumination. A better solution would be to move the whole lens closer or farther away from the cuvette. Where the lens needs to be rotated is around the axis set by the pump beam. This tilt angles the focal line. You can either align the focal line with the laser resonator for maximum conversion efficiency or tilt it slightly away from it to limit the amount of amplified spontaneous emission that travels along with the dye laser beam. - Rhodamine 6G is indeed a nice dye.

Dude, if I had known that you needed dyes I would have sent you some of every kind that I have on hand for free. I really need to get up with you on donating some stuff one day. As a chemical distributor, I have tons of dyes, just like these, that you could just have. Take fluorescein for example, I have pounds upon pounds of the pure powder, plus tons of others. If you ever need anything like that, just let me know and I'll gladly send you a ton of each absolutely free. 😃

"Then I just download the genetic sequence from 'thingiverse' and quickly insert it into e-coli"😂😂😂😂

Literally synthesized molecules in an abandoned farm house for 2 years trying to make one of these dye lasers. And the meat laser? Way farther than i ever could achieve. I made 3 dyes but i could never get them into lasers. I didnt have ambition, or 3d printing but man. This was literally my dream as a 17 year old. Thank you for reminding me of the days of gold when chemistry channels like nurdrage and chemplayer and masterminds like styro the like Began to inspire me. You really rock, bro.

As one of my optics profs once said: almost everything will lase if you pump it hard enough. Also, and without getting into the intricacies of building a high end laser, a simple trick to make the laser cavity more stable (which should make it easier to align) is to replace one of the end mirrors with a slightly convex mirror (i.e. with focal length larger than your cavity length).

I built one of these when I was 13 not realizing how dangerous they were, I am still surprised and thankful I did not get electrocuted or blinded doing it!

How neat that you went over the build process in such detail

It really feels like stuff is ramping up this year! Looks like the infrastructure work over the last few years is really paying off.

"I maintain a huge collection of genetically engineered E Coli" belongs in an xkcd somewhere Thanks to StyroPyro I immediately recognized the TEA laser and am immediately scared. Also that feeling of building it all proper like and it works worse than the prototype is so much feels.

“And I’m the only bio-engineer on UKposts crazy enough to try. That, in a nutshell, is why I subscribed in the first place 😅

This video really takes me back about 35 years, when a friend and I puttered around with both N2 lasers and fluorescent dyes in our off time. Something that's not mentioned but should be kept in mind - Rhodamine 6G will stain *everything* you get it on, so aprons or other cover should also be worn in addition to PPE for the risks that will affect your health and not just your clothes.

You single-handedly convinced me to switch from physics to biology back in 2021. Mad science is awesome!

I can only imagine what your ultimate goal could be with all of this, I suspect that a lot of this stuff has already been played with in the big labs, but the fact that you are doing it here, just proves that ingenuity and the masses can prevail. Best to you, Ken.

"I wouldn't recommend you building this, but here is exactly how to build it" 😂

Modern science truly is amazing, can't wait for the meat laser.

Oh sweet 3D files for a dye laser. I have Been looking for this. Thank you!

I'm a laser physicist by trade and this is a fantastic video. Most of it is familiar, but i'm very impressed by how well you synthesize all these different topics and condense them without necessarily reducing them to an inaccurate form. Specifically, the topic of grating based mode-matching is awesome and a bit of a pain to explain well, but you managed to do it in less than 30s! One critique is that the TEA doesnt work via stimulated emission, but rather ASE (amplified spontaneous emission). This also means that although it is fairly temporally coherent, it isn't perfectly so which is why it only runs on a pulsed source.

great to see ur lab growing well! sputtering, meatcubator, lasing set-ups, so cool!

Downright kaleidoscopic rush of a video, and all of it was actual genuine examples of what amazing, beguiling thing you're working on! _No wonder_ I'm subscribed to you guys.

This gives me the same vibes as writing my engineering honours project, you've clearly done tonnes of amazing work and have absolutely no time to show us the immense amount of work you had to do to get to where you are. Very interesting and exciting video, loved it!!

I discovered Les's Lab few days ago, and what he does is very impressive, but also shows how some of these things are not as complex as they might initially look. I knew of your channel for years, but this is a great showcase of lasers. The dye lasers are cool. It is also mind blowing that anybody can just engineer DNA of a bacteria with just few clicks in a browser. Wow.

Loved this video. I once made a TEA laser in highschool for my science fair project. Used a neon sign transformer, some aluminum foil, painter's plastic, plexiglass, and aluminum rods to essentially make it. I wish I had access to information like this back in the day. Not that I'd know how to make these laser proteins but it would have made for a fun discussion along with how the UV laser worked and what it could be used for.

MEAT LASER!!! ok we are getting into supervillain territory. . . and i am 100% here for it

Thinking quickly, Dave crafted a laser out of cells, a dye, and a laser!

Thank you so much for posting the dye concentrations in sensible units! I'm making a rhodamine b dye laser with a SHG-YAG and the main unknown I've had trouble nailing down was how much dye to use.

Bro I didn’t even know you could do almost any of what you talked about, that’s super cool, like ordering custom dna things that grow with your desired codes or whatever you called it, wild man, keep it up

your mad scientist projects have gotten so ambitious. this is some wild stuff man, can't wait to see how you make it work.

It's weird seeing a video on such a sketchy laser machine and not be reminded how it'll delete my retina if i even think about looking at the the spot on the wall

This is a crazy project. But your work is so amazing and inspiring. Good job bro!

Quick reminder that 20-ish years ago nearly everyone had a 20,000 volt flyback transformer just a few feet away from them protected from touch by just a few millimeters of plastic. I am of course talking about CRT televisions and in case you are wondering YES people did die poking around in them with screwdrivers.

Impressive work! But don't forget to protect your skin from UV, good sunscreen is a good option if you dont want cover yourself up all the time

"I've done so much with so little for so long I can now do anything with nothing" I saw/read this many decades ago and thought I'd share in case you haven't read/heard. Very appropriate for you imo. Something I tell my kids and others, "There is nothing hard, just things you haven't learned yet" Enjoyed very much, be safe and hf learning.

This is absolutely awesome, thanks so much for sharing your work !

This is making me think about that silver nanoprism video from applied science a while back, and that’s one I’ve gone back to quite a few times. Great video, love this stuff as always

Your nitrogen laser is a beautiful build! Far superior to mine I must say. Great video!

"We really don't recommend you try to build one, seriously it's super dangerous and could easily kill you in an instant. So anyway, here's exactly how you could build one."

This is interesting. I worked with a 1-watt CW laser that used Rhodamine 6G. My first thought about using a more complex molecule is that more of the light will be trapped in states that are not optically connected to the ground state. A solution to this for dye lasers is to circulate the dye at a fast rate to keep the dye exposed to the pumping laser "fresh."

Back in the 90s, a guy who worked at an air force base,gave me a laser that he found in storage. some guy had made it in the 70s or 80s in his spare time from a magazine article, but one of my favorite movies was My Science Project. So I had a very high opinion of it. In this video,I recognize a lot of the parts. Mine has an watched board for the base, & plans are ancient photocopies.

For the love of god please please no one ever break this man's heart. If he turned evil we are doomed!

Oh sweet a new laser video. I missed the TEA laser video you made and hid.

So happy to see a fellow mad scientist on their way to making the potentially possible, possible. I haven’t taken any steps yet but I hope to in the next couple years

I am from Northern California, but this is the year that I am out of the state for my pre-doctoral internship… I am so sad that I’m going to miss seeing all of you when you would all be so close to my home. I hope you do this again!

Something I don't see anywhere which should be shouted from the rooftops. WHERE EYE PROTECTION WITH LASERS. Not sure if this is the type that needs it if it's a special case, but better not lose an eye.

nice!

Not what I was expecting to think about today but here it is and it’s fantastic

WHAAAT? Dude, love the synergy between disciplines and perceived simplicity you show here. That's beautiful science, I love it. Thank you.

I've been waiting many years for more work to be done on bio lasers. Thank you sir.

Wow, this is good. I have never thought living cells could be used for stimulated emission! Now I have gotta build my own!

My lord this is an incredibly well crafted UKposts video.

For the first 3+ minutes all I've been wondering about how uv tends to kill cells, good thing he did take that into consideration for the video explanation

8:34 Just look at that coronal discharge! Going from the sharp corners as they should! Beautiful!

The amount of information we get here for free boggles my mind every time.... Can't wait to see what's coming up next in the future.

"oh your He-Ne laser is stabilized with iodine? Mine's stabilized with a 16oz filet mignon"

I came to a dead stop at “huge collection of genetically engineered E. coli.” To a guy with thousands of books, parts for obsolete computer architectures, and a ton of other random stuff “too good to throw away,” that seems weird. Yet you did something with it. I’m envious.

We missed your videos and mad scientist inspiration!

You guys have the secret sauce for massive technology advances - cross pollination of these vastly different disciplines. Massive love from Beryl CNC!

I used to work in laser manufacturing and i sure do love ThorLabs. They are so fun for an industrial supply company.

This is the guy who always asks "could we" instead of "should we." Definitely on watchlists somewhere.

No period on the T.E.A acronym graphic. This isn't critical feedback, just a very relatable moment. Addicted to your channel now. Thank you!

It will probably be covered in that next video, but I’m intrigued by the Dye from E. Coli at that Makerspace scale. Dye lasers are cool and all, but applying that to other uses of florescent dye (Microscopy Stains, Art, Non-Destructive Testing, etc) would be neat, especially with like how you said it being cheap.

We have the same "lucky reptile" meatcubators in the lab i work in. Some of them after about half a year developed an awful fault: they would crank their setpoint to 60C, and cook the content. It was a real challenge to find the cause of the issue. It seems to be caused by leds in the display not behaving as good diodes, causing false button press detections (because pins are shared).

A term that might be useful for adjustment is a micrometer screw, thimble or similar. A very smooth, precise piece of machenery for relatively cheap.

I would really love to see all those mad scientist creators collaborate on one project just to see what did they create

just brilliant, mad science and brilliant information delivery thanks ! keep making videos :)

I’m definitely not going to do this, but if I wanted to this video would be a godsend. Well done

Wow! Thank you so much for the information. I am now a subscriber and look forward to personally going far down the laser world rabbit hole. Again, thank you so much... GL

As always super interesting content :D Thanks for sharing! :)

I can't begin to imagine how many watchlists you're on, but I appreciate the work

Bro, this was cool as heck. Keep it up, you inspired me to look for a hackerspace in my own town for a radiotelescope project, or making some graphene or making genetically modified bacteria (have no friends to do them with so i am waiting for the day i finally decide to try something)

Man I wish I knew enough about EE to do that. I have a pretty healthy respect for high voltage, current (especially AC) after a close call a few years ago while replacing a heating element that I had tested and believed was isolated. I saw cool lightning burn in for a couple of days. 😅

Interesting point you almost make - an arc in air has a negative resistance, that is why there were early transmitters based on spark gaps as this negative resistance overcame the losses in the LC resonator circuit, thus creating a waveform at a frequency. Plenty references on the web if you look. Modern day examples of similar are tunnel didodes that have a V/I curve that has both positive and negative sloped parts of the curve, depending on bias voltage.

"Meat Laser" might be the coolest/weirdest idea I've seen on UKposts. And there is a lot of cool and weird stuff on UKposts.

8:33 love the micro blue antennas out of the corners when it's not arcing

I spoke to the scientist that created Glo- fish and ive been wanting to learn more about different proteins from jellyfish and other specimens. I never considered they could be made into a laser 😂. Love this channel already.

I wish styropyro helped you out with this, would have been the colab of the century

in the late 80's there was a company in Germany called Lambdaphysics. they have produced different laser dyes and researched their properties. later this company became part of Coherent

Lasers of diverse colors is beautiful and exciting

"I want to build a meat laser" what a way to start a video

Since you got a dye laser now, you can try a little experiment I saw in the video of another channel: Use the dye laser (green or sth. similar) without the diffraction grating to produce a wider range of wavelengths and shine the laser through a glass fiber cable (100-200m long) to produce supercontinuum laser light which is actually white.

"don't do this at home!" "anyways here's the circuit diagram for the laser"

The only complaint I have with this channel, is the upload frequency. These videos are so interesting.

I believe this man's work will bring forth some good discoveries one day

Man, I love this guy's videos. I wish I grew up nextdoor.

watching stuff like this makes me realize how much of my life i have let go by without having my childhood want to build things and experiment ..life isn't over tho.. inspiring :)

keep building from scratch I love learning form scratch. Amazing stuff!

I was so excited to see this video! as someone who is a big fan of you and Les’ lab and as someone who happens to have a few vials of purified GFP laying around, I have wondered about this exact idea. I am so excited by the idea of you trying it for real! I hope to see you at OpenSauce.

So cool! I did similar a few decades back but I made my pump with plexiglass and pumped it down with a fridge pump, soooo loud and yeah, I did burn my eyes a little being in the room without full circumference sheilding on the glasses. Lesson kids: ALWAYS wear eye protection that coverover your eyes all the way around to the skin when playing with lasers. What you can't see WILL blind you if you are careless. Loved the vid, subscribed.

We all appreciate laying out, explaining and telling the specs. I can guarantee you I am absolutely not planning on building this. I value my life thank you for the warning 😂

He has (finally) gone completely insane. Good

What a refreshing beacon of hope, rigor, and whimsy.

Can you make a video showing how you built those bioreactors using beakers and 3D printed parts?

Brilliant video. Absolutely buzzing I found your channel. It’s exactly the type of content I like to see. Keep up the great work!

As an electronics engineer, I can say you garbage laser has everything an electronics device shouldn't have : very high voltage with high current, exposed metal parts, no isolation whatsoever, massive EM emissions, bad contacts, sharp angles, etc... And yet really want to build one. Impressive work

Something I am slowly becoming obsessed with is a true blue feathered chicken. I think I have found the right person. I will probably send you an email about this project for advice in the next year when I get more set up for this experiment!