Something Useful to do with your Green Laser Pointer

Green laser pointer finds traces of dangerous chemicals[/b]
By using an ordinary green laser pointer, commonly found in offices and college lecture halls, an Israeli research team has developed a new and highly portable Raman spectrometer that detects extremely minute traces of hazardous chemicals - in real time.

The novel sensor’s compact design makes it an excellent candidate for rapid field deployment to disaster zones and areas with security concerns. The researchers will present their findings at Laser Science XXVIII — the American Physical Society Division of Laser Science’s Annual Meeting collocated with the Optical Society of America’s (OSA) Annual Meeting, Frontiers in Optics, which is taking place in Rochester, N.Y. next week.

Ilana Bar, a researcher at the Department of Physics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, commented, “With proper investment, we believe that this straightforward system could be deployed quite quickly as a consumer product.”

Green laser pointer finds traces of dangerous chemicals

That's interesting... I used to work for a company that tested medical gas delivery systems in hospitals for purity, and absence of hazardous substances. One of the machines we used was a device that used a laser bouncing off mirrors inside a cavity. You could adjust how many times the laser went through the cavity by changing the pitch of the mirror.

I can't remember if the instrument measured the attenuation or deflection (it's been a few years), but we would calibrate it to a certain value on pure nitrogen, based on the substance we were testing for, and the measured difference on the meter would indicate the ammount of detected substance. It would test for a pretty wide assortment of compounds, CO2, CO, methane, hydrocarbons, waste anesthesia gasses, etc.

I wish I remembered more details about the equipment. I only worked for the company for a few months. They traveled more than the military and paid like McDonalds. Nevertheless, this news is pretty cool. Maybe they found a way to test for everything all at once?

I work in the environmental consulting world, any type of device that can detect traces of contaminants is a good thing.

When you say traces, are you referring to ppb levels or ppm, also, how does it do with poly chorinated compounds like PCE and TCE ? There is a big need for indoor air surveys near drycleaning facilities.

Nice post !

Pigsnibble said:

When you say traces, are you referring to ppb levels or ppm, also, how does it do with poly chorinated compounds like PCE and TCE ? There is a big need for indoor air surveys near drycleaning facilities.

Click to expand...

If I remember correctly, I think we were measuring in ppm, but depending on substance that could be in the hundredths.

What would be more fun than to develop a laser based analytic tool for vapor analysis of poly-chlorinated compounds, thanks for the information and good luck on its development.