Watch this video about how a laser works! 

Learn about lasers.

Get a head start on your physics knowledge with these free online classes. What are you most looking forward to learning? 

Learn about physics on Khan Academy.

Start your adventure with a biology overview, then dive into videos and concepts based on your favorite science subjects on Khan Academy.

Choose your favorite topic in science, then explore it.

Check out this podcast all about space and science from astrophysicist and cosmologist Neil deGrasse Tyson to hear about everything from space travel to extraterrestrial life.

Listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson tackle cosmic issues.

The people you keep around you will play a huge part in whether or not you reach your dreams & vice versa. Name those people in your life that come to mind first. How can you utilize their support to succeed?

Identify the most supportive people in your life.

Physicists

Conduct research into physical phenomena, develop theories on the basis of observation and experiments, and devise methods to apply physical laws and theories.

Investigative occupations frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.

Investigative

Realistic occupations frequently involve work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions. They often deal with plants, animals, and real-world materials like wood, tools, and machinery. Many of the occupations require working outside, and do not involve a lot of paperwork or working closely with others.

Realistic

Artistic occupations frequently involve working with forms, designs and patterns. They often require self-expression and the work can be done without following a clear set of rules.

Artistic

Conventional occupations frequently involve following set procedures and routines. These occupations can include working with data and details more than with ideas. Usually there is a clear line of authority to follow.

Conventional

Enterprising occupations frequently involve starting up and carrying out projects. These occupations can involve leading people and making many decisions. Sometimes they require risk taking and often deal with business.

Enterprising

Social occupations frequently involve working with, communicating with, and teaching people. These occupations often involve helping or providing service to others.

Social

Chief Scientist/Senior Inventor/Laser Motive

Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed

Knowledge and prediction of physical principles, laws, their interrelationships, and applications to understanding fluid, material, and atmospheric dynamics, and mechanical, electrical, atomic and sub-atomic structures and processes.

Knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, and their applications.

Knowledge of the practical application of engineering science and technology. This includes applying principles, techniques, procedures, and equipment to the design and production of various goods and services.

Knowledge of circuit boards, processors, chips, electronic equipment, and computer hardware and software, including applications and programming.

Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.

Knowledge of principles and methods for curriculum and training design, teaching and instruction for individuals and groups, and the measurement of training effects.

Knowledge of the chemical composition, structure, and properties of substances and of the chemical processes and transformations that they undergo. This includes uses of chemicals and their interactions, danger signs, production techniques, and disposal methods.

Knowledge of business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, production methods, and coordination of people and resources.

Knowledge of media production, communication, and dissemination techniques and methods. This includes alternative ways to inform and entertain via written, oral, and visual media.

Knowledge of design techniques, tools, and principles involved in production of precision technical plans, blueprints, drawings, and models.

Using scientific rules and methods to solve problems.

Understanding written sentences and paragraphs in work-related documents.

Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions, or approaches to problems.

Talking to others to convey information effectively.

Understanding the implications of new information for both current and future problem-solving and decision-making.

Giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times.

Communicating effectively in writing as appropriate for the needs of the audience.

Identifying complex problems and reviewing related information to develop and evaluate options and implement solutions.

Selecting and using training/instructional methods and procedures appropriate for the situation when learning or teaching new things.

Astronomers and Physicists

Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations

Physical Scientists

Perform complex calculations as part of the analysis and evaluation of data, using computers.

Analyze data from research conducted to detect and measure physical phenomena.

Describe and express observations and conclusions in mathematical terms.

Design computer simulations to model physical data so that it can be better understood.

Write research proposals to receive funding.

Report experimental results by writing papers for scientific journals or by presenting information at scientific conferences.

Conduct research pertaining to potential environmental impacts of atomic energy-related industrial development to determine licensing qualifications.

Observe the structure and properties of matter, and the transformation and propagation of energy, using equipment such as masers, lasers, and telescopes, to explore and identify the basic principles governing these phenomena.

Develop theories and laws on the basis of observation and experiments, and apply these theories and laws to problems in areas such as nuclear energy, optics, and aerospace technology.

CERN Physics Analysis Workstation PAW

COMSOL Multiphysics

The MathWorks MATLAB

Wolfram Research Mathematica

Microsoft PowerPoint

Eclipse IDE

Microsoft Azure software

Microsoft Visual Studio

Adobe Systems Adobe Photoshop

GNU Image Manipulation Program GIMP

Ploticus

Oracle Java

Perl

Python

Amazon Web Services AWS software

Microsoft Access

Oracle Database

Structured query language SQL

Linux

Microsoft Windows

UNIX

Autodesk AutoCAD

Mathsoft Mathcad

RibbonSoft QCad

Puppet

VMware

Microsoft Excel

Argon ion lasers

Diode lasers

Single frequency dye lasers

Zeeman split lasers

Cyclotrons

High-energy accelerators

Linear accelerators

Positive ion accelerators

Gamma ray spectrometers

High-resolution spectrometers

Prism spectrometers

Visible spectrometers

Arbitrary function generators

Function generators

Optical detectors

Radiofrequency RF generators

Analog frequency analyzers

Portable fast Fourier transform FFT analyzers

Spectrum analyzers

Two-channel fast Fourier transform FFT analyzers

Analog sound level meters

Digital sound level meters

Pistonphones

Sound intensity probes

Atomic force microscopes

Friction-force microscopes

Magnetic force microscopes

Scanning tunneling microscopes STM

Double monochromators

Grating monochromators

Scanning monochromators

Neutron detectors

Scintillation probes

Thermoluminescent dosimeters

Atomic emission detectors AED

Photodetectors

So, when you were leaving Livermore, and you're making that transition to your next step, what was that like for you? >> Scary, if it's not scary it's probably not enough of a challenge. [LAUGH] It is very hard to make changes, and in some ways it's gotten easier for me over the years because I've had enough experience to know that yeah, it'll eventually work out. No matter what decision I make it's not gonna be the end of the world. I can change my mind back, etc. But it was very tough. 

Fear

Struggle

Transitions

Scared

The fact that I'm interested in-in-in space makes perfect sense because I was the proverbial child of the Space Age, you know? I was born one year before Sputnik launched. And I'm a little unusual in that I always knew I was gonna be something in hard scientists, engineer, that kind of thing. In my case, I ended up going out to um, University of California at Berkeley. When I started my work at Livermore, sort of the first big project that I did was to try and develop technology for something called, uh, Laser Launch. You basically use great big lasers on the ground to power rockets. If you spend your time with interesting people, with people who are the best at what they do, first of all, you keep learning things. Second, you never get lazy. Um, and third, you find that those same people, even after you lose track of 'em for 20 years, they show up somewhere else odd, and they go, "Hey, I'm doing something cool, "come over here and see this." 

Jordin Kare Highlight

The difficulty that I had was that, to a pretty good approximation, I would probably have been classified as Asperger's when I was a kid. Not autistic but I have a whole bunch of the symptoms of being upset at change, not coping and not responding to social clues etc, etc. I had this long struggle to say okay can I cope with that? And that was my hard hurdle was to be able to say, yeah, I can leave the familiar places what I know I can cope with and go off their despite all of the problems I have with dealing with people and strangers and unfamiliar situations. If I had not done that, I wouldn't have had anything like the career I've had. 

Asperger's Disorder - Dealing With Change

(Jordin) The fact that i'm interested in space makes perfect sense. I was the proverbial child of the space age. I was born one year before Sputnik launched. And i'm a little unusual in that I always knew I was going to be something in hard scientist, engineer, that kind of thing. All the way back, literally to nursery school. My parents arranged for me to go to sort of a science related summer camp. I said, "Oh, great, I'm gonna build this laser." But at the time I was just fumbling around trying to understand what was going on. Trying to, you know, write out explanations. And suddenly I understood. I scrounged all the parts of the power supply and turned it on and it didn't work. Um, but we figured out that I had gotten two of the wires backwards and turned it on. And it lit up with this red glow and put this little dot across the room. Now these days you can go spend two dollars and go get a laser pointer. At that time no one had ever seen anything like that. You know, folks at MIT were building these things. Here I had one on the table in front of me. And it was gorgeous, it was this intense pure red. And it glittered. And that was this enormous confirmation for me, that yes you know, I wanted to do this kind of thing in the future. I don't know that its ever happened quite that strongly again but you get that, "I understand this", or, "I can make this work." Where it finally all comes together and you go, "Damn, that one's good." Um, if you get that, then you're doing something right. Uh, if you don't ever get that, then maybe you're not doing the right thing. So I ended up building, you know, spending the summer playing with that, and then did a science fair project with it and then built a fancier one. Then uh, you know went off to college and starting working on projects with one professor who was working with lasers. And I found that I was leaning towards physics because the more, the people that I was meeting were more interesting. You know I, I, I don't know what it is that distinguishes it. But as you look at different groups, um, some of them you just, the percentage of people who are really neat is higher. Uh and so in my case I ended up going out to University of California Berkeley. When I started my work at Livermore, sort of the first big project that I did was to try and develop technology for something called Laser Launch. You basically use great big lasers on the ground to power rockets. And I worked on that very heavily for about five years. And then the funding all went away. The group that I was in ended up being cut back and we couldn't do as many interesting things. And a friend of mine and I became freelance scientists. We just did consulting for people. And so I ended up designing satellites for people for about ten years. And there did come a point where I said, "Nope, I have to go try something different." I've done a lot of the work over the years with lasers, trying to beam power with lasers from one place to another, uh to launch rockets, to do various other things. And a few years ago, um, while I was still being a freelance rocket scientist, NASA decided to offer some prizes for certain technologies and one of them was effectively for power beaming. And so I said, you know, "Sounds like an opportunity." And so Tom and I got together and said we'll start a company and the first thing it'll do is it'll field a team to compete for this NASA prize. And so we've been doing that now for about three years. And we're about a month away now from the contest. It's gotten delayed a couple of times. The laser shines up on that from underneath and powers this little motor and drives the wheels here. And this will run up the cable at about ten miles an hour. One of the reasons that I'm doing this is because it's a stepping stone to make yet another run at that particular goal of making laser launch technology happen. You know, that's my dream is that, you know, sometime before I, you know, retire and toddle off to wherever, uh I'll see serious effort to build laser launch system. See that become, "Yeah this is the way we're going to go back to space." (Roadtripper #1) It seems like, at least from my science education, in college and in high school, that it's very um, individualistic. Like, here's your homework assignment. Um, what was it like, um, collaborating and um, what do you, what do you think you gain from collaborating with people? (Jordin) I'm very good at understanding, you know, what needs to be done. How to, how to build something. to do a particular task. I'm terrible at actually making the things compared to a lot of the other people here. Um, not any one person can do everything. There's always somebody who is better at you at some of the things you need to do. Networks are one of the most important things you can do. If you know people, you know make friends in whatever field you are interested in. They keep reappearing and if you can learn to pull people together, you'll see your visions realized. Uh, much quicker and easier than trying to do it yourself. And there's about 20 people who've worked on this project. Everybody involved in this is still doing it as their evenings and weekends operation. But we have our trailer. Not quite as fancy as your trailer. But uh, we have our trailer and it has about 4,000 watts of laser in it. So that's going to get hauled down to Edwards Airforce Base in a few more weeks. And we're going to try and push a climbing vehicle up a cable that's hanging from a helicopter. So it'll climb a thousand meters straight up powered all by the laser. (Roadtripper #2) Well I guess the last question that we have; If you have one piece of advice you can give us, um, what would it be? (Jordin) The best one that I can give you actually is hang out with good people. It's the, if you spend your time with interesting people, with people who are best at what they do, with people who are smarter than you or better than you, than first of all you keep learning things, and not just practical stuff. But whole ways of doing things and ways of thinking. Second you never get lazy. Um and third you find that those same people, even after you lose track of them for 20 years, they show up somewhere else odd and they go, "Hey I'm doing something cool, come over here and see this." And low and behold you find your doing something you never thought about. Uh, so hang out with good people. Makes the rest of life a lot more interesting. 

Interview

What was it like for you going to Berkeley and being like, what's up Nobel Peace Prize winner? >> [LAUGH] >> Part of it is that I was sufficiently clueless. I didn't, yeah, he's a professor, he's like all the other professors. But thinking back both to my interactions with him and watching people like Ray Alvarez that they see students coming through, they know what your going through. Not only have they been there themselves but they've seen lots and lots and lots of others go through. If you have the interest in the field, they'll be pretty good at saying, yeah. I think you'd be interested, I think you'd be at home if you come and work in this area, work with me, work with my group. 

Physicists

Overview

Career

Roadtrip Nation Leaders in This Career

What Physicists Do

Other Job Titles Physicists May Have

Tasks & Responsibilities May Include

Physicists

Overview

Career

Roadtrip Nation Leaders in This Career

What Physicists Do

Other Job Titles Physicists May Have

Tasks & Responsibilities May Include

Education

Level of Education Attained by Physicists

Majors Related to Career

Related Careers

Related Leaders