being stupid with a 445 1 watt

I keep seeing these videos on youtube of someone sitting in their room swinging they're supposedly, 445nm 1watt laser around. Now even with proper eye protection couldn't a reflection still seriously injure or blind them???

yes and no.

No..... because they're obviously not blind after doing this, assuming they've avoided any direct contact with the beam & their retinas.

Yes.... because overall, the brightness of 445nm at this power is as damaging to your unprotected eyes as staring at the sun for a few minutes every day for a week or so. Maybe more, maybe less. I'm not sure nor interested on retrieving the exact data to make that point, but you get the idea.

In short, it's russian-retina roulette with long term consequences no matter what, and always a bad idea.

So what you're saying is the goggles will protect you mostly from the scattered radiation that would reflect from the impact And not from a reflection or direct Contact to your eyes through the glasses. I know these are stupid questions I m just trying to get more of a feel for what the glasses actually do. And I like the russian retna roulette comment ............lol

Goggles are rated at different levels of protection, so depending on how strong they were & how strong of laser you're talking about here - they'd have to level out to be effective.

With a 1W laser, the goggles would arguably need to be rated OD4+ or higher I believe to protect you from a direct hit to the eye for a brief second aka an accident. Anything more would likely cause visual damage, as goggles aren't made for protection from a concentrated laser beam to the pupil. Any other scattered light however, wouldn't be visible with decent goggles unless their optical density was incredibly low.

They're not stupid questions btw, everyone starts somewhere & this information is important to understand. I am happy to pass it along :beer:

So another question off topic....... even with a fairly decent quality laser focus to infinity, is the dot going to increase in size no matter what laser you have or lens?? Also, what is the word that describes that happening????

Yes.
Divergence.

If your dot is focused to infinity then the dot size never increases with distance, hence infinity. Beam tighening & widening with light is called divergence.

danefex said:

If your dot is focused to infinity then the dot size never increases with distance, hence infinity. Beam tighening & widening with light is called divergence.

Click to expand...

ROTFLOL!
You fail!
Shut up and lurk moar!:evil:

It shows you don't have very much experience with lasers....

anselm said:

Shut up and lurk moar!:evil:

It shows you don't have very much experience with lasers....

Click to expand...

You're sharp.... I probably should've clarified more between the differnce with perfect focusing and divergence as well... for exceptional folks like you. I'll do my best with the oblivious lurking though, I can never get enough of that OR trolling around here you know

((Divergence))
Divergence is a measure of how much a beam will spread over time. A lower divergence means that a laser will maintain it's "beam" longer, where a higher divergence will spread out more. This isn't to be confused with focus however. A laser that is focused to infinity will still have divergence.

...You're right, I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Okay just as long as it is the blind leading the blind out here. No you answered my question perfectly that is exactly what I wanted to know.