How to make a laser from a Gin and Tonic, promises the headline of this article in Popular Mechanics.

Eagerly, I read through the whole thing. Well, the whole thing until, about 500 words in, I got to this little nugget:

A laser requires energy to operate, but it’s not always as easy as plugging one into a wall socket. The gin-and-tonic laser would have to be powered, or pumped, by other lasers.

Yes, according to Popular Mechanics, you can make a laser out of a Gin and Tonic. But Step One is “first, get some lasers.”

And lest you think that you can just rig up a buncha laser pointers, the article quickly goes on to state:

During the 1975 experiment in Boulder, researchers pumped straight gin using a 20-watt carbon-dioxide laser, which is 4000 times more powerful than a 0.05-watt laser pointer …. With 20 watts of carbon dioxide laser light, they could only produce 0.00001 watts of coherent gin laser light.

Now, although that sounds a little dispiriting, the article does conclude with the possibility of drinking a laser, “at which point,” they say, “all of the meticulous effort will be worth it.”

And that does sound cool. So I go back and read it again. Do I really need to come up with a hospital-quality CO2 laser that’s easily worth several thousand dollars? Turns out, no! Teased with a link from the article, Popular Mechanics promises that I can build my own!

Wait — I can build a powerful laser in my basement? Why isn’t that the headline, skipping all the Gin and Tonic stuff?

So I click over to that article, on Instructables. I am told that, with an Etch-a-Sketch and a broken scanner, I can build a laser for less than $30. Incredible!

The first step? Buy some laser diodes.

Sigh.