50mw laser eye damage

[joshshermannn1]

i let a friend of mine play with a 50mw green laser of mine(with glasses) and when i came back, glasses were off and he had flashed it across his face on accident i assume. what damage could this cause?
it has a very small beam diameter.

 

[joeyss]

uh those very small beam ones are nasty.... did he see it hit his eye? If so tell him to get it checked out.

 

[joshshermannn1]

Direct contact for a few seconds.... How bad is it? He's getting it checked out tomorrow. Is it fixable?

 

[joeyss]

Probably not.....why did let it hit his eye for a "few seconds"???

 

[Mohrenberg]

Did it hurt? Cause I hear stupidity doesn't hurt at all.

How old is your friend anyways?

 

[joshshermannn1]

he's a very stupid 18 year old....
and i dont know....
@mohrenberg hahaha

 

[Mohrenberg]

[/sympathy]

18 years old. Old enough to be accountable for his own actions. This is his fault for being stupid and I feel no sympathy for the damage to his eye. ESPECIALLY if you furnished him with a pair of safety glasses which he simply took off. Does he happen to look down the barrel of guns as well?
I guess he can only hope the permanent blind spot is in the corner of his vision and not directly in the center.

Furthermore, I just bought my first pair of laser safety glasses about a month ago. I played with lasers for almost 3 years with no mishaps. The fact that he managed this in a matter of minutes is just astonishing.

 

[joshshermannn1]

hopefully he's learned his lesson, after her gets back from the eye doctor ill report the damage.
can eye surgery be helpful at all?

 

[HaloBlu]

Direct contact for a few seconds....

You mean he just aimed the beam straight into his eye & stared at it for awhile?.....
Could he have been drinking perhaps? Not like I haven't seen that level of stupidity tho.
Hell at least it wasn't a 445.

 

[Fiddy]

i dont think anyone would be stupid /pain tolerant enough to shine it directly at your OWN eye, more like milliseconds or a 'flash over'....

 

[LaZeRz]

I know someone that looked down the barrel of a gun to see if the pin was working

He shot it and miraculously it missed his head... Only to hit an oil tanker.

 

[Moebius]

Pretty horrifying but not surprising. I have found that most people think lasers are toys.
After a serious safety talk with a 25 year old computer programmer, I placed the 532nm in his hand.
Immediately, he began to wave it around the room at everything in sight, including mirrors.
I'm not sure why people don't get it. Nowadays I hand my lasers over to nobody.
I hope your friend is ok.

 

[Mohrenberg]

Pretty horrifying but not surprising. I have found that most people think lasers are toys.
After a serious safety talk with a 25 year old computer programmer, I placed the 532nm in his hand.
Immediately, he began to wave it around the room at everything in sight, including mirrors.
I'm not sure why people don't get it. Nowadays I hand my lasers over to nobody.
I hope your friend is ok.

Same with my coworkers. Sure, you can trust them with your life, but don't trust them with a laser. They simply don't get it.

 

[lazeristasUVISIR]

Sure, you can trust them with your life, but don't trust them with a laser.

I think there is no natural feeling that a laser is dangerous thing. Thus point here and there, upps it hit me :undecided:

Anyway back to the topic starter:
Did he feel anything after the laser hit his eye(s)? If it was only a nearby eye (no direct hit), he'll be fine.

The next time don't give any laser to anybody, like your wife (or a girlfriend) :wave:

 

[joeyss]

^ I find girls tend to actually be scared of lasers blinding them even if they don't hit anywhere near the eye or face. I guess it's just like them and spiders ....most of the time.

 

[Fenzir]

I show my friends my 5mw green pen and tell them it can cut metal, then shine it on their hand to see their reaction.

On a more serious note, I've seen a couple of people walk in and say that their eyes have been hit by lasers, under most circumstances it's a 1mw red laser and I've never seen a case where that did anything except excite the cones in their eyes.

Whenever I hear that somebody has a case with eye damage, I slip in and ask them how they got the damage, the WORST was from a 100mw green laser and he ended up fine, but other instances a 50mw gets somebody and they get a blindspot. It really varies from person to person and because every situation, duration of exposure and distance is different, we can not be sure to say.

I can say from personal experience however that if you're just looking at a bright dot (68mw here ) for a while, if you go turn off the laser and turn the lights on, your eyes might hurt for a couple of minutes, that's just irical response.