I was a MA/MST student at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Accoustics.
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I met with Rick Pam in the Varian physics laboratory today. I'm going to try to set up a speckle-pattern interferometer to do measurements on acoustic instruments. I've never worked in an optics lab before, but it looks like a lot of fun and Rick showed me the basics. I'm working with a Class IIIb laser. Apparently the way laser classes work is: Class I you can look at with no problem, Class II you can look at for a few seconds before damaging your eyes, Class IIIa your blink reflex is fast enough to protect you from damage if you blink immediately, and Class IIIb your blink reflex is not fast enough. So it's potentially dangerous, but with the right safety precautions it's fine. Rick said "Treat it with respect, not fear." He also gave me an interesting fact - the standard f-stop numbers on a camera lens are set so that each time you go down one standard number the power is halved. I'm pretty excited about setting this up. It seems like a very useful tool for doing research on vibrating systems, and I think I will have enough time to finish it and make some measurements. Plus, if I do a good job documenting the process that would help future students who want to build a similar system. It would be nice if we could have a permanent interferometer set up at CCRMA, but we're pretty crunched for space. Still, it's something that might be worth considering someday.