Beams of light lit up gymnasiums across the county as students enjoyed Georgia Tech Research Institute’s (GRTI) interactive Laser Project exhibit.

GRTI’s Laser Project is a mobile science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) laboratory that offers various interactive laser exhibits for students. Students are provided with hands-on opportunities to learn about the history, theory, and applications of lasers in a fun setting – one might call it a travelling museum. 

The laboratory is operated by Georgia Tech students, research scientists and engineers.

Over 1,000 Fayette County students from Inman Elementary, Robert J. Burch Elementary, Flat Rock Middle, Sandy Creek High, Sara Harp Minter Elementary, Whitewater Middle, and Whitewater High participated in the Laser Project. 

Students entertained themselves and each other at GRTI’s interactive laser show exhibit where they created their own laser show using scanning technology. “This is just like the Stone Mountain laser show,” one excited fourth grader said. 

At the laser telephone exhibit, students were able to have two-way conversations transmitted wirelessly over a pair of laser beams. 

A group of students gathered around the laser fountain exhibit and fascinatingly watched as curved lasers travel through water from one place to another.

The Laser Project offered other exhibits including a ruby laser, helium neon laser, diffraction station, speckle demonstrators, a laser ray box, and a hologram image. 

The GRTI Laser Project was created in 2010 and has been seen by over 35,000 students from kindergarten to collegiate grades in Georgia and South Carolina. 

Coordinator of Innovative Partnership Development Virginia Gibbs says, “This was a great opportunity for our students to engage in STEM outside of the classroom.”