Hello, I'm Calling About a Manuscript

Michael W. Farn

It had been a frustrating day in the lab. Hour after hour of labor and still no progress. I had tried everything, but still couldn't get the light to go through the pinhole. It wasn't as if I was working in the infrared. HeNe lasers are supposed to be simple to spatially filter and collimate. Then it dawned on me. I had forgotten the most basic of optics principles: light only travels from left to right! I was working from the wrong side of the optical table. Quickly, I ran around to the other side and—voilá—the red beam shot through the pinhole and down the length of the table. I was excited. This was groundbreaking research—experimental evidence confirming the previously only theoretically postulated left to right phenomenon.

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