Title: Build your own Laser
Product review: All laser experimenters (and optics types, too) should have a copy of "Scientific American"'s "Light and Its Uses." [5] It gives construction plans for a Helium-Neon (you blow the glass tube yourself), an argon ion (even more complicated), a CO2 (designed and built by a high school student, and able to cut through metal), a dye, a nitrogen (a great first laser, but watch out for UV light) and a diode laser (obviously, you buy the diode laser and assemble the driver circuit from the plans they supply). They also explain how to make holograms using visible and infrared light, microwaves and sound. There are other projects, too. The book is getting fairly old (the HeNe dates to the '60s), but it's still a great reference.
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