Question: What kind of things can you create with light?

Susan Skelton answered on 13 Nov 2013:

Thanks for the question, dizzy!

We can create lots of different things. Very high power light beams, called lasers, can be used to cut through most materials, including sheets of metal. Laser cutting works by melting or burning away the material where the light shines on it. This makes a much smoother cut than when using a saw or knife. This can be used for cutting out the metal plates to make a car, for example.

But I guess you are talking about the use of lasers to make the really tiny objects I showed in my profile? To do this, we use a special type of liquid plastic. When we shine the light on this liquid, it changes from a liquid to a solid. We can concentrate our light to a really small spot, and move the light spot over the liquid plastic, to create the shape of solid plastic that we want. When we wash away the liquid plastic we are left with a tiny solid plastic object – in whatever shape we want!

So far we have tested this technique to make a tiny bull, teapot, and lizard, but we could make any shape, just by changing where we move the light spot.

This is the best technique for making really tiny objects.

It is my dream to be able to make tiny robots which could travel inside our body and cure disease from the inside!

Let me know if you have any good ideas for objects I could make! 😉