Shining laser into crystals

[solar00]

I have some high quality crystals like the ones sold by Novalasers (ball and teardrop), but is it save to shine my X85 into these crystals?
When using the safety goggles i don't see anything.

I've tested it with a <5mw red and i see the red dots everywhere so the light will come out in all directions.
Are these beams still harmfull when split several times? or is there another way to use Crystals and looking at the effects?

The only solution i can think of is taking photographs of the crystal with the laser shining on it.

 

[Xenodius]

AFAIK, you pretty much have to tape that and then watch the video-- And pray your camera doesn't get lazed ;D

However, If you have, say, a waffled rod, you know that the laser will only reflect off it laterally... But it still makes a neat effect.

 

[Ashton]

Yes this is an older post, but I wanted to pull it to point something out since this type of optical expariment is so popular

Lets pretend, for a moment, that every time the laser splits, it's a pervet 50% split (in reality this rarely happens, but for sake of argument) I will also asume the user is using a 100mw laser, for simplicity sake. if you shine the laser into an optic and it splits into 2 beams, they're each 1/2 as powerful, 50mw. If these break up again, you've gor 4 beams @ 25mw. if you continue doing this math, to get to the safe range of 5mw (which many argue still isn't safe) you must split the laser atleast 20 times.

In reality, splits are rarely 50% exactly, sometimes they are only 5-10%, meaning it could take hundreds of splits to get the beam down to safe levels. If you want to play around like this without goggles, the only safe way to do it is with a >5mw laser. even a 10mw laser can split multiple times and still be >5mw.