Everything you wanted to know about laser goggles
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- Опубліковано 6 вер 2024
- You often see us wearing safety goggles in our videos, but are they really safe with the huge lasers we're using? I answer that question in this Q&A video.
The goggles in the video are available at StanWax laser in the UK shop.stanwaxla...
Not sponsored or an affiliate link but I am friends with Rob at Stanwax.
Hi! Hope you’re enjoying the nerdy laser videos. Any more laser safety questions? Ask away!
Could you do a test where you point a laser through the googles, with a baloon or other form of flamable component behind it, to see how strong should a laser be to actually damage tissues behind it? It would be an awesome experiment (but could damage the glasses maybe?)
Sounds fun! If you watch Steve Mould’s part of our collaboration, I did some balloon tests which was pretty cool. I should probably post those as they weren’t featured much.
As you're mentioning the allowed output of regular laserpointers: Many years ago, I bought a green laserpointer on Ebay (maybe from a dubious seller?!), for about ten Euros/Pounds. It was worth the money, but I always wondered whether the claimed specification on it is true. It says less than 5 mW (or even less than 1 mW, I'm not exactly sure at the moment), but the green beam always looked quite bright for just that low output. But perhaps it's true. I mean, as it is a green laser, its beam appears much brighter to the human eye than a red beam with the same wattage would do.
It would be interesting to know what true specs my laserpointer has, but I don't have options to let it be examined. All I can say is, that at least I always used it safely and responsibly.
And thank you for this interesting video and the interesting and important topic! :)
Thanks Max! Yeah it's always a bit of a crap shoot but the pointer could well be 5mw and still look super bright. But yes of course as you say, there's no real way of knowing. And either way you want to avoid it getting in your eye! 😅
Your eyes are most sensitive to green light, so green will always look brighter than other colours at the same power. Generally it's unlikely for cheap lasers to be more powerful than they claim - it's normally the opposite!
@@russgarrett1664 For higher power it might be, but not in the range where you want use them for smaller experiments and so on. A physics doctor once bought laserpointers to do group experiments with, for some open day at university, stuff that also children were supposed to handle. So when they came they were 100mw lasers, even though he ordered something small probably 1mw, but i am not sure anymore it were around 200 laser pointer he ordered. So he wrote them if they can do something about it, getting new ones and sending them back etc. the seller told him then that this is not possible, he did not have those small lasers but then asked what the problem is anyways, shouldn't he be excited to getting more for his money and if its important he can print him new labels that say 1mw.
@@FetesBrot Oops! Yes, always worth testing them if you can, or at least assuming the worst. (Or indeed buying from a trustworthy source.)
There is a commonly-stated factoid that cheap green lasers are sometimes missing IR filters which result in IR leakage and a much higher output power. (Most green lasers are made from an IR laser with a frequency doubler.) But I've never seen any myself and a few people have doubted that IR leakage would increase the output power more than a few percent.
one need to be quite careful with those laser pointers, output could be easily >5mW, we got a RGB set, where only red was within safety limits, and two others were 20-30mW when measured.
as mentioned, cheap green ones may miss IR filter, so one could easily end up having bright 532nm + invisible and powerful 1064nm
As a curious follow up, seeing you take your spectacles off to put the goggles on; I wear specs with a fairly strong prescription, and can't do contacts - if I wanted a solution for regular/long term use do "prescription laser safety glasses" exist, or would I have to wear something more like overspecs/googles that I do for impact protection?
Some safety goggles manufacturers offer overspecs as form factor - glass/filter and coatings will stay the same, but they will fit nicely over regular spectacles (I hope Seb wouldn't mind a reply here)
Not at all! I expected as much but I’ve never seen them. For me, I just use reading glasses so it’s not a problem for most things.
Hello are there any laser goggles that can see invisible lasers?
Night vision goggles would see IR lasers!
@@seblee
Awesome,
So I just came across something really cool called laser listener. How do I go about either making one or buying one? Need a 'bonding project' for me and the grandson.
This really is gonna become a running gag, isn't it? "Dang it, I missed it!"
lol no you didn't, it's edited from the last live stream!
@@seblee Yeah, I just realised that. I do think I missed the stream as well, though
@@fisch37 it's the unlisted one that you commented on so I'm pretty sure you saw it 😅
@@seblee Well, yes, but I still missed it as in wasn't there when it was streamed
@@fisch37 well yes technically that is correct 😊
Safer than beer goggles!
Lasers do look amazing with beer goggles but sadly they're way more dangerous