Is it illegal to shine a laser pointer in someones window?
Even if you do not injure someone, or hit anyone in the face with a laser, if police are called there is a good chance you would be cited for disorderly conduct. This is a reasonable charge as at the very least you are disrupting and potentially scaring people inside their homes. It's actually quite scary that in the last 5 years it is possible to buy lasers modules with shockingly high power output for under $100 on eBay. There are now cheap laser diodes capable of putting out over 2 watts of optical power that can be easily inserted into a flashlight housing to make a portable laser point. This much power is enough to instantly cause severe eye damage just from a partial reflection from a glass window or glossy surface. In recent years there has been a huge increase in police enforcement regarding like shining lasers at airplanes. A significant fraction of the people who point lasers at airplane pilots are caught, and they often receive serious jail time. Shining a laser at someone's house isn't creating as much of a life-threatening danger as temporarily blinding someone who is piloting or operating a vehicle, but nonetheless, catching and prosecuting people for irresponsible laser use is something that police take very seriously now.
Im so mad! Kid pointed Laser in cat's eye!?
This kid came over to my house a grabed my cat's laser pointer toy. The cat is scared of her and ran under the bed. Her brother told me she pointed the light in BOTH of my cat's eyes trying to "get them to come out from under the bed"!!! I'm so PISSED and scared that my cat's eyes could be damaged. All my cat wants to do is lay on the bed. How can tell if there is damage? What should I do? BTW she knows better than to point the light in their eyes.
The red light in a computer mouse - is it a laser? can it hurt your eyes?
No, it's an LED. Some mice have lasers (Logitech MX1000) but you can't see the beam. Put down your mouse.
Is it dangerous to shine the lasers in laser tag in one's eye?
Laser Tag doesn’t usually use lasers - it uses transmitters (LEDs) on the target’s body, and the rifle is a sensor with a focussing lens and a very narrow field of view that can detect this transmitter only when it’s pointing straight at it.Although this sounds backwards, it’s far easier to receive the signal over long distances this way, and is more reliable and accurate than sending a beam of light out from the gun instead - though cheaper toy versions might actually send light since that eliminates the need for a radio link between the shooter and the target - but longer range laser tag guns are infrared sensors, not emitters.When the gun receives the signal from the target, it knows it’s pointing at a target, and can identify that target, so it sends that target a signal saying it’s just been hit if the trigger is pulled at that time.If you got a programmable remote control, theoretically you could save a copy of every target, find a dark, quiet hiding place, and shoot the remote control for an entire game instead of the target, and the targets would never work out who was hitting them or where they were hiding.As a result, the lasers on laser tag are mostly for show - they tend to be very low power, around a few mW at most and usually below 1 mW which are pretty safe. While it will appear bright to the person who gets it in their eye, it shouldn’t have the energy to do any damage.It’s always possible someone will put a bigger laser on it during maintenance or out of foolishness, but I wouldn’t normally expect that to happen. If there’s a green laser, it might be indicative of that since green lasers are quite dangerous - cheap ones can put out a lot of energy in the infrared that would be damaging to the eye.But smaller red ones that aren’t that bright are harmless.
For how long do I have to aim a laser at the moon to see a dot?
There are two possible questions here. The first is simply how long would it take for a laser to travel to the moon and back.The moon is around 384,000 km away. The speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s. The journey is round trip, so:However, if the question really is about seeing the dot - you won't. Ever. Beams of light diverge. Take a flashlight (torch) for example. Why is it that if you are 20 meters from a wall the light will illuminate it, but if you are 40 meters from that wall, the light won't illuminate it? What's happening here? Is something stopping the light from traveling that distance? No, the light is traveling unimpeded, 40 meters is nothing for a photon. But the beam of light gets larger and larger with distance. So, the extremely dense cross section of photons at the lens of the flashlight is very bright, but as the beam gets wider, those photons are distributed over greater area. The light density gets less and the beam gets dimmer.Very expensive lasers are designed to minimize this beam spreading, called divergence - but they can't stop it. And we do reflect lasers off the moon. Well, more accurately, we reflect lasers off mirrors that the Apollo astronauts left on the moon.Although the moon looks bright to us, that's just because the sun is radiating it with so much light. The moon is gray like charcoal. It only reflects about 7% of the visible light that hits it. So, even the best lasers combined with the best telescopes aren't going to be effective at reflecting visible light off of the surface. But those mirrors are highly reflective.Even so, very few of the photons from the lasers aimed at those mirrors actually make it back to the telescope. There is a project called APOLLO (Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation) that fires laser pulses at those mirrors and measures the returned signal to calculate extremely precisely the distance to the moon. They use a powerful laser and yet only 1.7 in 1E17 of the photons from their laser are sensed upon return.That's 1.7 in 100,000,000,000,000,000 photons. With their system, that means the returning signal consists of 5-10 photons. A giant 3.5 meter telescope can only detect 5-10 photons. Your eye isn't going to have such luck.Here's a picture of APOLLO shining its laser on the moon.
Is it dangerous shine a laser pen in a cat´s eyes?
You do run the risk of damage to his eyes, but if you are leading him with the red dot on the floor and he is chasing it, there is no risk. The risk comes if he decides to try and find where the dot is coming from. But he would have to look directly at the pointer, and you control the pointer to not let that happen. He isn't going to be hurt running through the laser beam. If you see him becoming interested in where the dot originates from, turn the pointer off. Then, when he loses interest in your hand, point the laser towards the floor where he will see it.
Laser light in my cats eyes?
Yes, it can damage your cat's eyes, if the laser hits them. They can be very dangerous in the "wrong person's" hands..........and your boyfriend's dad is A WRONG PERSON !!! Next time you see that laser, take it and put it somewhere that NOBODY can find it. Then, when the bf's dad wants to play with YOUR cat, and can't find the laser.........pretend it's lost......OR get rid of it, so you don't have to lie about it. Just say.....It's GONE. Hope this helps.......YOU need to PROTECT YOUR CAT in ANY WAY POSSIBLE.........from the "IDIOTS" of your world! Good luck.............
I accidentally shined a laser in my eye. can this cause permanent damage?
once for a very short time probably wont cause any damage, repeated use will. if you notice any blur talk to an optometrist.
How strong does a laser have to be to damage your eyes?
If you are looking for a simple answer, I apologize in advance.The quick answer is about 5 milliwatts in a 3 millimeter diameter beam for wavelengths from 1.4 microns to about 0.2 microns. 5 mW is brighter than the sun. It is about the same power entering into the eye but is focused to a smaller spot.The longer answer is: it depends on the wavelength and how long the laser beam is on the eye. See graph below.Less than 5 milliwatts can damage the eyes if the person is impaired and his blink reflex is slow.If the beam is spread out due to a beam expander, distance from the source or due to a slightly diffuse reflection, then the power level to cause damage will be higher. The equivalent irradiance level is approximately 50 mW per sq cm., but large pupils could be make your eyes more susceptible to damage at lower irradiance levels.For wavelengths longer than 1.4 microns, it may take more than 500 mW per sq cm to cause damage. Again impaired reflexes can work to reduce the damage threshold. The longer wavelengths are absorbed by the cornea, protecting the retina, and thus higher damage thresholds apply for infrared.The safe levels are shown below. (MPE=Maximum permissible exposure.)Typical ANSI Z136 maximum permissible exposure levels. Note from this chart maximum safe level for 1 second for visible lasers is 1.5 milliwatts per sq cm. For a tenth of a second, approximately 5 mW per sq cm is allowed and for 0.01 seconds, about 8 mW per sq cm is allowed. Beyond 1.4 microns, up to 700 mW per sq. cm is allowed for up to a second.However, I wouldn’t want to expose myself to even 10% of the maximum permissible dose if I could possibly avoid it. I have only exceeded this 10% less than ten times over 40 years, so I feel I did reasonably well.Please note that laser pointers are legal up to 5 mW (class 3a —- only class 1 is considered completely eyesafe). This is enough power to cause temporary blindness resulting in falls, collisions, and disruptions leading to personal injury. They can also cause permanent blindness if stared at for more than a second. There are illegal higher power laser pointers sold on auction sites from China that should be labeled class 4. These can cause accidental permanent damage directly to the eye. I do not consider most laser pointers “safe.” Inappropriate behavior with a laser pointer is not only unsafe, it is a criminal offense in many places. Many companies have banned class 3 and class 4 laser pointers from the workplace.