Lasers rock!

And scientists do to. It was a blast last night! The concert was great! The performances were so professional that I could not believe these people scientists, not full-time performers. We were truly spoiled to have Sir Peter Knight as the program announcer.








The first performance was given by a duet of true rappers from Phat Photonics, Oregon Health and Science University. It was pretty entertaining. If not sophisticated witty wording of their master pieces, I would have easily confused them to professional rappers hired to entertain us.
"Light Amplification Stimulated Emission Radiation..." Does it sound familiar?





Eric Hansotte, local from San Jose, a graduate of the University of Rochester (same as me), an engineer, impressed us with his strong beautiful voice and the energy with which he delivered his performance. I liked how Peter Night announced Eric's performance, saying that Eric has to play music in the bars to financially justify his engineering hobby.


















Two amazing highly-professional guitar performances, given by Yoshiaki Nakajima and Brian Kolner, impressed us with the complexity of music and technique that they had to apply to be able to make it sound. How people do that? Wow!


The Free Lunch band from Lawrence Livermore Ntl Lab made all of us wanna dance!!! Such a music, such a drive! Their singer had such a deep beautiful voice, and so much energy, that even the nerdiest of us could not help shuffling their feet in place, making small dance, while some other people just danced happily. That was absolutely awesome!!!!!!!!!






















At the end of the concert we had Second and Third Harmonic Generation with Bob Fisher, Steven Block, and Tom Baer. They played Appalachian Fiddle Tunes, obeying at the same time the phase-matching condition for second- and third-harmonic generation by perfectly synchronizing with each other. They performed using a banjo, two mandolins, one guitar, and two harmonicas.


All these performances confirm how talented the scientists are, and not only in science! It all makes me feel proud for the wonderful people in Optics, for their creativity and talent.