Lasers operate in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Essentially they’re heat blasting things in a very small area on the surface of the pan, whatever ash is left over can easily be washed away
Lasers can transfer energy to the atoms of the material. Like all light, laser light is made up of photons, but the photons in a laser are much more focused, coherent, and controlled–specifically, you can control the amount of energy in each photon, and you can ensure that it’s exactly what you need for the next bit.
Atoms in any solid material have chemical connections to other nearby atoms. We call these connections “atomic bonds”, and they’re made up of exchanged or shared electrons. It takes energy to break these bonds–the energy moves electrons around and can disconnect two connected atoms. As it turns out, photons are the particle that carries electromagnetic energy, which electrons can absorb or emit. To break certain bonds, you need energy of at least a certain minimum amount. Hence, lasers are really useful for this, because you can make a laser you know has exactly the energy-per-photon needed to break the bonds, thus kicking out (“ablating”) the material on the surface.
So, when you turn on a laser etching/drilling/cleaning machine (all the same concept, just used in different ways), you are adding energy to the atoms on the surface of the material. This energy can either cause the material to evaporate (liquid->gas) or sublimate (solid->gas without becoming a liquid in between), usually for low laser flux (=energy flow via the laser), because at low flux you’re mostly heating up the surface. At high laser flux, you’re instead transforming the surface atoms directly into plasma. Either way, you are, in a certain sense, “burning off” the material from the surface of the target: the laser is adding enough energy to make those surface atoms blast off.
Lasers are really really focused, concentrated light. Light is energy for this purpose. When you focus a lot of energy into a small point, it tends to generate a lot of heat.
So the laser is really, really hot at a small point. So it’s relatively easy to burn things off of a surface in a really controlled way with lasers.
When I say burn, that’s kind of an understatement. Vaporize is more accurate… it just turns it to gas more or less due to the intensity, so there’s little to nothing left behind.
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The high temperature of the laser vaporizes the outer layer of iron.
Lasers operate in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Essentially they’re heat blasting things in a very small area on the surface of the pan, whatever ash is left over can easily be washed away
Lasers can transfer energy to the atoms of the material. Like all light, laser light is made up of photons, but the photons in a laser are much more focused, coherent, and controlled–specifically, you can control the amount of energy in each photon, and you can ensure that it’s exactly what you need for the next bit.
Atoms in any solid material have chemical connections to other nearby atoms. We call these connections “atomic bonds”, and they’re made up of exchanged or shared electrons. It takes energy to break these bonds–the energy moves electrons around and can disconnect two connected atoms. As it turns out, photons are the particle that carries electromagnetic energy, which electrons can absorb or emit. To break certain bonds, you need energy of at least a certain minimum amount. Hence, lasers are really useful for this, because you can make a laser you know has exactly the energy-per-photon needed to break the bonds, thus kicking out (“ablating”) the material on the surface.
So, when you turn on a laser etching/drilling/cleaning machine (all the same concept, just used in different ways), you are adding energy to the atoms on the surface of the material. This energy can either cause the material to evaporate (liquid->gas) or sublimate (solid->gas without becoming a liquid in between), usually for low laser flux (=energy flow via the laser), because at low flux you’re mostly heating up the surface. At high laser flux, you’re instead transforming the surface atoms directly into plasma. Either way, you are, in a certain sense, “burning off” the material from the surface of the target: the laser is adding enough energy to make those surface atoms blast off.
Lasers are really really focused, concentrated light. Light is energy for this purpose. When you focus a lot of energy into a small point, it tends to generate a lot of heat.
So the laser is really, really hot at a small point. So it’s relatively easy to burn things off of a surface in a really controlled way with lasers.
When I say burn, that’s kind of an understatement. Vaporize is more accurate… it just turns it to gas more or less due to the intensity, so there’s little to nothing left behind.