Mosquitos are always landing up on the ceiling, you could just mount it above eye level with hard stops preventing it from pointing down, make sure you don’t have shiny ceiling things, and it’s safeish :P
When light encounters a surface, a certain amount of it is absorbed, some may pass through the material, and the rest reflects. All of those functions are variable with wavelength- a material that is opaque to visible light may be transparent to other forms of radiation, like radio waves. This is actually where our perception of color comes from- it is the wavelengths of light that weren’t absorbed by and didn’t pass through the surface we’re looking at. (Sorry, I’m a nerd about this sort of stuff)
A laser is extremely concentrated light. Most materials can only absorb a certain amount of that energy. As such, a lot more of it reflects back off the opaque surfaces it encounters, even if they aren’t mirrors. For a strong enough laser, even that weakend reflection can do damage.
I’ll have to see if I can find where I read this to cite the source.
The National Ignition Facility is researching using insanely huge lasers to start a nuclear fusion reaction. They are currently the most powerful laser in the world.
Want to know what the second most powerful laser in the world is? The reflection of the NIF laser.
Meanwhile, China is now making very cheap welding and cutting lasers for consumers, the reflections off these can blind in a millisecond. My lab has multiple redundant safety protocols and strictly monitored training, expensive goggles, key lock interfaces, panic stop buttons and we are at 1/100th the power of these laser welders getting pointed at shiny metal.
Yeah, I’m actively sourcing a laser welder for my work and one of the requirements is the ability to fit a part that is ~24 inches long and pretty much the only way we’ve found to do it in our budget is to have an opening in the enclosure that uses curtains and brushes to allow that part to stick out but still protect from the light escaping, and we’re only talking 300 watts
Mosquitos are always landing up on the ceiling, you could just mount it above eye level with hard stops preventing it from pointing down, make sure you don’t have shiny ceiling things, and it’s safeish :P
When light encounters a surface, a certain amount of it is absorbed, some may pass through the material, and the rest reflects. All of those functions are variable with wavelength- a material that is opaque to visible light may be transparent to other forms of radiation, like radio waves. This is actually where our perception of color comes from- it is the wavelengths of light that weren’t absorbed by and didn’t pass through the surface we’re looking at. (Sorry, I’m a nerd about this sort of stuff)
A laser is extremely concentrated light. Most materials can only absorb a certain amount of that energy. As such, a lot more of it reflects back off the opaque surfaces it encounters, even if they aren’t mirrors. For a strong enough laser, even that weakend reflection can do damage.
I’ll have to see if I can find where I read this to cite the source.
The National Ignition Facility is researching using insanely huge lasers to start a nuclear fusion reaction. They are currently the most powerful laser in the world.
Want to know what the second most powerful laser in the world is? The reflection of the NIF laser.
Found it, SciShow. https://youtu.be/gqPlVUuXiYY
Meanwhile, China is now making very cheap welding and cutting lasers for consumers, the reflections off these can blind in a millisecond. My lab has multiple redundant safety protocols and strictly monitored training, expensive goggles, key lock interfaces, panic stop buttons and we are at 1/100th the power of these laser welders getting pointed at shiny metal.
Yeah, I’m actively sourcing a laser welder for my work and one of the requirements is the ability to fit a part that is ~24 inches long and pretty much the only way we’ve found to do it in our budget is to have an opening in the enclosure that uses curtains and brushes to allow that part to stick out but still protect from the light escaping, and we’re only talking 300 watts
That’s cool as fuck