What are the basic properties of lasers and their practical applications? Lasers have several basic properties, such as the speed of light in a va...

What are the basic properties of lasers and their practical applications?

Lasers have several basic properties, such as the speed of light in a vacuum being the fastest possible, the ability to propagate in a straight line in a homogeneous medium, and the ability to refract and diffract. Lasers can also be easily directed through mirrors and conducted by optical fibers. They can be focused on a very small area with a converging lens, which allows them to be used to heat or cut very localized regions. Lasers can transport and read information, as well as control electric currents. Pulsed lasers can generate intense pulses of short-duration light, which can be used as a surgical tool and for precision cutting. The radiation emitted by a black body depends only on its temperature and is universal. The spectrum of emission of a cavity depends only on the temperature of the body where it is located and is universal.
The practical applications of lasers include telephony, where they are used in place of copper cables to transmit information at a much faster rate; the reading of barcodes, where a laser is used to read the binary code on the barcode and transmit the corresponding information to a computer; and the use of optical fibers to guide light from one end of the fiber to the other. Lasers can also be used in surgery and for precision cutting, as well as to control electric currents and convert light signals into sound signals. Finally, lasers can be used to heat water using solar energy, which is a simple and effective way to generate hot water.