Poll: People's reactions to seeing lasers!

Different areas are different, with different people, and using your laz0rs in public often gets different reactions from passer-by's. Even as I go from one part of town to the other, different things are already noticable.

This thread is for three things:

1) Vote! What are the general reactions you get when people see you lasing in public?

2) See other people's polling results.

3) Share your opinions/stories on reactions you've gotten in the past when people have seen your laz0r!

have fun and remember, with lasers it's always Safety first, safety second, and safety third

peace & thanks
-cmak

"What in the hell is Wayne up to now?"

You need an option that says "WTF is that thing?!?!?!?!?"

you forgot "what the hell do you need a laser for" I hate that one.

or the wife "You spent HOW MUCH!?!?!?!"

you need to add mutliple optind as well as another option "how many miles does this reach?". It's a pretty common one to me, for which I haven't an answer. If you tell them the truth (infinite), they look at you like if you were trying to fool them. If you tell them that you cannot estimate it and that it depends on much more things than just the power of the laser, they look at you like if you were talking in chinese. At the end, I tell them "10km" and they just say "woha!".

I don't use my laser in public places very much at all and when I do I pick the place and time if you know what I mean, so I have never had a complaint about my use among people in public, just the oppisite I have only had good respones from my use.
and latley when using my Whith Fusion Time Machine people want to buy it, I have a hard time being able to turn it off due to request to keep it going
or even getting out the room with it LOL
I have only ever had one experence that was negative, I had a red He laser on a tripod about 6' off the ground and a dumb ass walked up and looked stright down the beam into the apiture then complained how his eye was hurting, so he went to the medical dept and was checked out and given an eye patch, I think they should have given him two
He turned out ok but it scared crap out of me for sure even though it was 100% his fault, so I hope some of you out there takes something from this
maby put up barriers if there are dumb ass's walking around LOL...

So far, every one that has seen my lasers are in awe, especially if they see my blue-rays. I however don't care for the attention. They always want to see it again. Then if you do bring it out, they always want a closer look or want to try it them selves.
So as of now, if I want to play with my lasers, I wait until late at night. If I do see a car or someone on foot I just turn them off and go back inside.

.oops

Excellant posts by Flamin and raploato- At a party the DJ moved a RGY Cheapy dj laser from atop a speaker to a lower spot and forgot to put it back. Two kiddos wandered up and tried to look into it. I shooed them away and mentioned it to the DJ. He shrugged and said the parents need to keep a better eye on them...WRONG ANSWER. we dont use him any more.

request to move thread to "General" section plz

oh and I get the "how far does it go" quite often too... should've had that as an option. whoever votes for option 5, I wanna know where they live!

oh and this is intended for when you're outside or something and a random passerby/stranger sees it... not your wife (unless you met her on the street randomly one day and got married and now live happily ever after... more or less )

peace & thanks
-cmak

cmak said:

request to move thread to "General" section plz...

Click to expand...

Or maybe the poll section

it's more than a poll...

let's put it this way, if there wasn't an actual poll attached, wouldn't this do just fine in the General section? But then again, the Polls section gets so many views

Its a poll

Same thing i get all the time...."what do you use them for????" " WHY THE HELL DO YOU NEED ONE"

sandidgepatrick said:

Same thing i get all the time...."what do you use them for????" " WHY THE HELL DO YOU NEED SO MANY"?

Click to expand...

I get the former when showing it to (mostly older) relatives and such... not really anywhere else. Once again, the main thought behind this thread/poll was if someone sees it on the street passing you by while you're using it

peace & thanks
-cmak

I don't show lasers to strangers, you generally have to be my friend before you see them. So of course people who see my lasers already know me and know kindof what to expect out of my nerdy-self. Of course, it doesn't help that all my friends are fellow grad students who work in labs with lasers just like me.

My wife's friends love them though. I get a lot of requests for parties, so I might bring one or 2 for someone's birthday party or whatever. Then they ask me how they work, and I'm just not capable of giving a simple answer to that, but a couple of them are actually intrigued and like my answers.

My favorite response to a laser ever was actually successfully impressing Shuji with one of my lasers. He hadn't seen a 593.5 pointer before when I used it for my prelim, so that was awesome to actually get an "Ohhhh!!!" out of him. Of course, he was one of the originals when it came to laser experimentation, and reportedly one of the originals when it came to showing off his great work: reportedly, when he gave the first-ever presentation on the first-ever successful blue/violet laser diode, he gave the presentation using his brand new blue-violet laser diode.