Why do we like lasers?

[Alaskan]

Because lasers can give the illusion of being able to see light from the side, as a beam, otherwise invisible. A lovely illusion it is.

Take your 1 watt green laser pointer for a space walk and see the beam then, you won't! Humm..... ideas coming; shoot a laser beam through a vacuum chamber with no air in it and take a photo of the in and out... ought to be interesting except the glass vessel will be lit up. Put a evacuated glass cylinder on the end of your laser pointer with optical ends, machine it into the laser, ought to make a cool looking device as the cylinder glows green and out pops a laser beam from the end from seeming nowhere.

 

[Agent Provocateur]

Most of my family and friends have no interest in my lasers. The only thing they ever say is "they are very dangerous", or "you'll get in trouble", or, "isn't it illegal ? "... I became fascinated by lasers back when I learned about them in high school back in the early 1970's. In those days lasers and laser hobbyists were very uncommon, there was no public internet, information was hard to come by, and there were no inexpensive solid state lasers as there are today. I read all the books I could find and I decided I wanted to build a ruby laser but I had no idea where to get a ruby laser rod and for a 14 year old the cost would have been prohibitive. Around 1977 me and a friend built (assembled) a 0.5 mW HeNe laser. These day's a person coming into the laser hobby is so much more fortunate than I was. Not only is there an abundance of laser devices available but there is so much more information available and it is so much easier for people who share this interest to find one another. Thanks largely to the Internet.

 

[IWIRE]

Put a evacuated glass cylinder on the end of your laser pointer with optical ends, machine it into the laser, ought to make a cool looking device as the cylinder glows green and out pops a laser beam from the end from seeming nowhere.

Thanks for the idea. :beer: I'm not going to use a glass cylinder under vacuum. A build I'm working on has a short barrel the beam exits. I was going to use aluminum and anodize it black. Think I'll try acrylic.