Use Elastic Light Scattering (ELS) to identify "bacteria" (can be used to identify yeast)
Advantages of ELS over current methods:low-cost, automated, able to deal with complex samples, accuracy, speed
Can be used for early bacteria identification in food industry, clinical settings, and biodefense
Papers on topic: OPN article; Elastic Light Scattering from Single Cells: Orientational Dynamics in Optical Trap;Types of Scattering; Bacteria Size Determination by Elastic Light Scattering;E. coli and ELS
Detect bruises on fruit using ELS
Bruises on tomatoes can be hard to detect because changes in the color of the flesh are not very distinct; using light scattering images bruised tomatoes have been distinguished from unbruised tomatoes with about 90% accuracy
Shine optical vortices through: circle, rhombus, and elliptical aperture
Use FTIR laser system to measure chemical composition of air in lab? outside?
Research on air-filled optical fibers
Record absorption spectrum of lab air? outside? with a modified telecommunication tunable laser (12 DFB lasers on a single chip)
Create an edible laser (rock candy?)
Find a novel way to measure the size of the bubbles in a bubblegram
Explore "cloaking devices": Terahertz cloaking device
Quantum eraser;Correlation vs. Causation in the quantum eraser experiment
Measure the sugar and/or water content of produce (tomato): Is it possible to reconstruct an entire nutrition label through optical means?
For Fall 2013 Create and study solenoid beams using SLM