Mimicking nature A material designed to mimic a quirky iridescent patch on a butterfly's wing may help prevent counterfeiting, say US engineers. The 'photonic' material, so called because it affects ...

A material that is capable of the “reverse diffraction” of light and that is inspired by butterfly wings has been made by researchers in the US. The structure combines features of the butterfly’s ...

The spectrum of laser technologies available to hackers has gradually widened from basic gas lasers through CO2 tubes, diode lasers, and now fiber lasers. One of the newer entries is the MOPA laser, ...

One of the coolest things about physics is that the same basic concept can pop up in several seemingly unrelated things: say, a CD, the seed shrimp’s antennae, certain fossils in the Burgess shale, ...

Q: What are diffraction gratings? A diffraction grating is an optical component for spectroscopy that splits light into different wavelengths. A typical diffraction grating has thousands of grooves ...

Diffraction gratings are curious things. Score a series of equally spaced tiny lines in a surface, and it will cause reflected or transmitted light to bend and separate into its component wavelengths.