Lasers, LEDs, and Liquid Nitrogen: Watch a Very Colorful Experiment Transpire!

By: | July 3rd, 2015

Lasers, LEDs, and liquid nitrogen are all intriguing, and can produce some wild results when performing experiments individually.

But what happens when you put these three together, specifically I’m talking about dropping lasers and LEDs into liquid nitrogen?

Upon being dropped into the liquid nitrogen, the lights transform into a myriad of colors, a pretty neat process to observe from the safety of my computer.

I have absolutely no desire to work with liquid nitrogen and lights with my own hands so a special thanks goes out to all those on YouTube showing us things some of us would never try.

Explanation from YouTube/Styropyro:

This experiment works by utilizing liquid nitrogen to cool the semiconductor to -196ºC, robbing it of much of its thermal energy. This causes the “bandgap” energy to increase, thereby increasing the emitted photon energy and decreasing the emission wavelength.

Marshall Smith

Technology, engineering, and design enthusiast.

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