# Dollar Store Laser Pointers



## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

Are they really laser pointers or just fancy bright red lights?


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2011)

If they're red they're probably diode pumped lasers. Those have been really cheap to make for a while now. The diodes are nothing special and the crystal for red is really easy to manufacture.

Easy way to tell: shine it on a target ~5 m away. If it stays coherent it's definitely a laser. Diode light would disperse really quickly. Lasers are nice and coherent. Stay that way over considerable distance.


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

Thank you Ian. I will pick one up tomorrow and test it out then. Just looking at them on eBay starting around 3 n a half dollars I got to thinking about looking at Dollarama up the road instead.


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## zurn (Oct 21, 2009)

GC is reallly THE reference for anything isn't it


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## Metal#J# (Jan 1, 2007)

Theyre the real deal......just not very powerful. I bought a green pen laser from Bangkok off eBay ($7 shipped) and it will easily go 2km or more. Not sure if they're legal??? With these ones you can see the beam.....not just the point.


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2011)

Metal#J# said:


> Theyre the real deal......just not very powerful. I bought a green pen laser from Bangkok off eBay ($7 shipped) and it will easily go 2km or more. Not sure if they're legal??? With these ones you can see the beam.....not just the point.


I don't think they're illegal, but green lasers are definitely not toys. Your eyes absorb green light very easily (that's part of the reason why you can see the beam on that green laser) and as such it takes only a small amount of direct exposure to a green laser to leave permanent spots on your eyes. Blinding someone permanently with a green laser is far too easy.

That being said, one of the coolest jobs I've ever had was using laser to cut stuff in an apps lab for a laser manufacturer. The green laser in particular was awesome fun -- used to slice through aluminium like it was butter. Super clean edge to the cuts. Thing of beauty really.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

Really fun amusing the cat with a red one.

Peace, Mooh.


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

GC FOR SURE! "__) of course if anyone knows how the double slit experiment is done for electrons I am all ears!!


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## Metal#J# (Jan 1, 2007)

keeperofthegood said:


> GC FOR SURE! "__) of course if anyone knows how the double slit experiment is done for electrons I am all ears!!


I actually just watched a program on that. It supposedly proves that light travels in waves and electrons can be 2 places at once. Cool shit. I think it was called How to Measure a Piece of String.....or something like that.


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## bagpipe (Sep 19, 2006)

Those have become quite the issue in European football (soccer) recently. "Fans" have been shining them in the eyes of opposing players to throw them off.


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

WOW lively talk.

The green ones boggle my mind how they can get into pilot eyes from the ground, the angles are so not right for that to happen.

I can believe that soccer hooligans could misuse any form of tech (high or low) as long as it makes a mess of things.



Metal#J# said:


> I actually just watched a program on that. It supposedly proves that light travels in waves and electrons can be 2 places at once. Cool shit. I think it was called How to Measure a Piece of String.....or something like that.


HAHA sweet love to see that too.

I have spent oooo a while anyways trying to find out about the machinery that they are using to measure/track the path of the electron and have not found anything on that end of the experiment. Everything is all about the outcome haha.


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

Mooh said:


> Really fun amusing the cat with a red one.
> 
> Peace, Mooh.



HAVE A READ MOOH!


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## jimihendrix (Jun 27, 2009)

Ha ha ha...!!!...That's an awesome comic strip...!!!...Love it...!!!...


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## ronmac (Sep 22, 2006)

bagpipe said:


> Those have become quite the issue in European football (soccer) recently. "Fans" have been shining them in the eyes of opposing players to throw them off.


Hard to believe that someone would knowingly inflict that kind of potential damage for the sake of sport. Further evidence we haven't advanced very far as a civilization.


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## al3d (Oct 3, 2007)

Metal#J# said:


> Theyre the real deal......just not very powerful. I bought a green pen laser from Bangkok off eBay ($7 shipped) and it will easily go 2km or more. Not sure if they're legal??? With these ones you can see the beam.....not just the point.


DO you still have a link to where you bought yours?


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

:bow: Would you believe. I hunted all over the Dollarama today, and nothing. I looked where the iPod etc gear is, I look where the tools are, I looked in the scrap booking and in the arts/crafts and I looked all over the business products!!!

Then, to the cashier "don't you guys sell laser pointers?" .... Cashier to me "Yes, isle 9 on the left, yellow package." ....

...

:|

Isle 9 on the left was PET TOYS and right in the middle of the toys ...


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

keeperofthegood said:


> HAVE A READ MOOH!


Excellent, thanks! Our last cat would try to climb the walls after it, or if I made it disappear under the edge of the rug she would search there for hours. Kept her fit!

Peace, Mooh.


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## Metal#J# (Jan 1, 2007)

al3d said:


> DO you still have a link to where you bought yours?


http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-5mW-532...ultDomain_0&hash=item336dd0b79e#ht_500wt_1234

This isn't the exact seller but they're all the same. It takes anywhere from 2-4 weeks for delivery but it's well worth it. I have bought 4 now and 1 did show up defective.......they sent another without asking for the other back. They give deals if you buy more than 1.


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## al3d (Oct 3, 2007)

Gracias..



Metal#J# said:


> http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-5mW-532...ultDomain_0&hash=item336dd0b79e#ht_500wt_1234
> 
> This isn't the exact seller but they're all the same. It takes anywhere from 2-4 weeks for delivery but it's well worth it. I have bought 4 now and 1 did show up defective.......they sent another without asking for the other back. They give deals if you buy more than 1.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

iaresee said:


> I don't think they're illegal, but green lasers are definitely not toys. Your eyes absorb green light very easily (that's part of the reason why you can see the beam on that green laser) and as such it takes only a small amount of direct exposure to a green laser to leave permanent spots on your eyes. Blinding someone permanently with a green laser is far too easy.
> 
> That being said, one of the coolest jobs I've ever had was using laser to cut stuff in an apps lab for a laser manufacturer. The green laser in particular was awesome fun -- used to slice through aluminium like it was butter. Super clean edge to the cuts. Thing of beauty really.


My dad was a machinist/tool&diemaker. He hoped I would go into mechanical engineering, so when I was 12 he brought me to the engineering open house at Carleton, where I saw my first laser in real life. I had just seen "Goldfinger" in the theatre, so when the grad student doing the demo defocused the beam, let me pass my hand through it as few times, then asked me to back away, focussed the beam, and cut a hole through a couple of razor blades..._using only light_, it had a lasting effect on me. I never went into engineering, but _hot damn_ I thought university was just the coolest place in the known universe. Ended up spending 25 years there.

The ripple effect skipped a generation and our older son decided, completely of his own accord, that he wanted to go into mechanical at Carleton. Go figure.

I don't know if people actually use laser pointers anymore. They are harnessed to an era when business or presentation graphics were essentially slides on a screen that you couldn't interact with in any way if the screen was high enough or large enough. Any such graphics nowadays would be easily "pointable" using a mouse


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