Friday 5 October 2018

Why I like Stack Exchange

Because you can get extremely interesting answers, like the excellent answer to the question "What is Chirped Pulse Amplification, and why is it important enough to warrant a Nobel Prize?" on Physics Stack Exchange:

The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics has just been announced, with half going to Arthur Ashkin for his work on optical tweezers and half going to GĂ©rard Mourou and Donna Strickland for developing a technique called "Chirped Pulse Amplification". While normally the Wikipedia page is a reasonable place to turn to, in this case it's pretty flat and not particularly informative. So:

  • What is Chirped Pulse Amplification? What is the core of the method that really makes it tick?
  • What pre-existing problems did its introduction solve?
  • What technologies does it enable, and what research fields have become possible because of it?

I am not a physicist and just know the usual school physics, but have no problem understanding the answer. Excellent!

2 comments:

  1. not sure if you are already using Quora but that is a great resource also (better than StackExchange) for these type of things

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    Replies
    1. I sometimes stumble over Quora when googling for something, but did not really extensively use it. I guess I'll have to take a closer look. Thanks for the tip.

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