{"id":13414,"date":"2013-03-28T03:00:18","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T08:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=13414"},"modified":"2013-03-28T03:00:18","modified_gmt":"2013-03-28T08:00:18","slug":"goldilocks-and-the-laser-pointer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/13414","title":{"rendered":"Goldilocks and the Laser Pointer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/podcast\/episode.cfm?id=most-laser-pointers-are-too-strong-13-03-24\">Most Laser Pointers Are Too Strong<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This seems a little \u2026 unfinished.<\/p>\n<p>Neither the story nor the referenced study mention if the lasers are all supposed to be 5 mW and thus class IIIa (or 3R), or if, as one link claims, there are higher-power lasers that aren&#8217;t limited by this threshold because they aren&#8217;t marketed as laser <em>pointers<\/em>. Or if the violation isn&#8217;t that they are claiming 5 mW and exceeding it, but rather they are incorrectly (and presumably illegally) calling the more powerful devices laser pointers and listing them as class III\/3R.<\/p>\n<p>Then there was this claim.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Green lasers use a shorter wavelength of light than red ones, making them brighter and more dangerous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This was lifted from the included link, but lacking the detail found in another link. Green lasers aren&#8217;t brighter simply because they have a shorter wavelength. If that were true, a blue laser would be brighter still, and they aren&#8217;t. In fact green lasers must fire fewer photons per second at you than red lasers do, if they all have the same power. What makes the green brighter is <em>your eye<\/em>. The eye&#8217;s response to light isn&#8217;t constant across the spectrum \u2014 it&#8217;s much better at absorbing (and thus detecting) green light then either red or blue, so the green light has a better chance at doing damage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most Laser Pointers Are Too Strong This seems a little \u2026 unfinished. Neither the story nor the referenced study mention if the lasers are all supposed to be 5 mW and thus class IIIa (or 3R), or if, as one &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/13414\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-body","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}