We present a simple high school and university undergraduate laboratory setup, with which we are able to texture microscopic structures into polymer and dye films using a homemade UV nitrogen laser. We describe both the laser and the microstructuring setup and provide detailed information on the laser and its beam characteristics. Although this is a low-cost setup, we are able to directly write or texture high-quality patterns into thin films, either by manually controlling a positioning stage or by programming a desired sequence for an automated structuring process. We introduce several hands-on experiments for high school and university undergraduate students and present our first results.

We describe an experimental implementation of the Malkus–Lorenz water wheel. We demonstrate that both chaotic and periodic behavior is observed as wheel parameters are changed in agreement with predictions from the Lorenz model. We further show that when the measured angular velocity of the water wheel is used as an input signal to a computer model implementing the Lorenz equations, high-quality synchronization of the model and the water wheel is achieved in the chaotic regime. This indicates that the Lorenz equations provide a good description of the water wheel dynamics.