Though lasers have revolutionized research in optics and many other fields of science, obstacles of cost and complexity have for the most part kept them out of the undergraduate curriculum and laboratories. The goal of this project is the operation of a workshop which will empower physicists and chemist to use exciting new possibilities with diode lasers to bring demonstrations and research opportunities before students. To accomplish this, attendees at a week-long workshop will have direct, hands-on experience with a suite of diode-laser experiments, and will receive seminar-format instruction in diode-laser competencies for replication and operation of such experiments. They will also become part of a follow-up support community intended to help them surmount obstacles in their own laboratories. The workshop will be of interest to physicists, and also chemical physicists, who want to bring modern tunable-laser methods into the hands of students in courses on optics, electricity and magnetism, quantum mechanics, and associated laboratory courses.
