Question about Yellow lasers

HildaS said:

What are these lasers for? I understand that they have distinctions in colors but what is the main purpose of lasers?

Click to expand...

:lasergun:

HildaS said:

What are these lasers for? I understand that they have distinctions in colors but what is the main purpose of lasers?

Click to expand...

The main purpose of lasers is that they are for viewing with our eyeballs.

The other purposes (of low power visible lasers) include pointing out distant objects (with the focus being the object illuminated, not the laser itself), giving presentations/speeches, and making/viewing holograms. The first two are rarely ever done by laser lovers though.

I love the intellectual side of lasers as well; it's not just "ooooh pretty.... :drool:", but also being able appreciate the science behind it. To own, understand, and assemble the most spectrally pure light sources available that also happen to be the only TRULY man-made light (lasers and single wavelegth emission do not exist in nature) adds another layer to it. When I stare at my 593.5nm SFG DPSS laser I'm thinking about the physics behind every step in the complex scheme that produces the light... from the atomic scale all the way up to the chemistry involved in creating the dies, crystals, and coatings which allow lasing, and even to thinking about which photoreceptors in my eyes are being stimulated and how that translates to a particular color. With changes in wavelength one really starts to think about how complex our perception of color is and you can really marvel at our eyes and brains. When I shine a high power laser at a target I think about how I'm converting chemical energy to electrical energy to electromagnetic energy to electrical and vibrational energy and then to thermal energy. I think about how lossy the entire system is and yet we have a coherent beam of light with powers greater than one watt at our disposal. With shorter wavelengths you also have fluorescence to play around with and I find it fascinating to take a spectrometer and observe the fluorescence spectrum of common objects. Even surfaces that don't appear to fluoresce actually do a small amount. It goes on and on.

There's a lot to lasers, a lot that is often overlooked and dismissed.

This topic made me shine my yellow once again.
Good read also, and i can relate to above poster.

Cheers, sm.

Sounds like you don't use your yellow too much.
Why let that color sit around? Let me take it off your hands

ZRaffleticket said:

Sounds like you don't use your yellow too much.
Why let that color sit around? Let me take it off your hands

Click to expand...

no no it's not like that.
i just had a operation on my hand.

cheers sm.

Because you burnt a hole through it using lasers?

LaZeRz said:

Because you burnt a hole through it using lasers?

Click to expand...

I wish the damage was pinpointed but it's not.
leaving in 10 min to busstop/ hospital.
Cheers sm.

Haha, hope you get well soon

HildaS said:

What are these lasers for? I understand that they have distinctions in colors but what is the main purpose of lasers?

Click to expand...

If you have to ask this then no answer is going to be good enough:beer: