Green Lasers Are Better Than Red Lasers

Posted on August 22, 2008
Filed Under Gadgets | Leave a Comment

by Richard West

Today, just about everyone owns a red beam laser pointer. Whether it has been used at work in conjunction with a PowerPoint presentation or to amuse yourself by teasing your cat or dog or, better yet, used to plant a red dot on your friend’s forehead, red beam lasers have been around for a while and contributed to many fun moments in the lives of otherwise sober techno-geeks and non-geeks as well.

But now the novelty of red-beamed laser pointers has worn off. They’re nothing new to see, and almost everyone has one. It’s a good chance that even your grandma, who has no idea what PowerPoint even is, has one. If you want to get the best technological toy out there, you’ve got to move to the next level.

Now, take a look at the new green laser pointers. And I’m not talking about that other kind of “green” where everyone is recycling their old newspapers. I’m talking about a cool new laser pointer that uses the far more powerful 532 nm wavelength; which, as any geek worth “his or her salt” knows, is tons better than the old 650 nm wavelength used by the red laser point. And, best of all, all that extra wavelength means it’s really truly green.

Green laser pointers, being more powerful than red, can highlight things far, far away. Not just lecture slides across the room, or your friends’ kill zone, but clouds, low-flying aircraft, star constellations. You can even see them outside during the day.

This equipment is so strong that it could actually get you arrested! Yes, arrested. Pointing a green laser beam at an aircraft could have the FBI on your case, wondering if you’re planning possible terrorist operations from your backyard. Pretty neat, huh? Your old dinky red pointer can’t do that.

When you point it at something, the pointer doesn’t just produce a tiny dot on its target, either. You can see the entire beam traveling all the way there. People seeing your beam will think it’s a light saber. How cool is that? Think of the new possibilities for light saber swordfights.

To make a green laser pointer, you need a whole level of technology way past the red laser pointer. The true green laser pointer requires a green direct injection laser diode, and these are not available for public consumption. So, there’s a whole complicated thing they have to do. (This next paragraph is only for extreme geeks.)

The green laser pointers you can buy on the market now are all using the very impressively named Diode Pumped Solid State Frequency Doubled technology, which gets shortened to DPSSFD, which is good for everyone. What this means is that an infrared laser diode pumps out 808 nm which is then altered to 1,064 nm which is then shot into a crystal that doubles the frequency to produce the green beam at 532 nm. (With frequency, smaller numbers mean stronger, but you knew that right? Only a geek actually read this paragraph.)

For all these reasons, green laser pointers are the cool new technological gadget that all your techie friends will love. They were actually created in 2000, but outside highly technical fields they’re still virtually unknown. Be prepared to pay a heftier price, though. Red pointers cost less than $10, but a new green laser pointer can be as much as $50. But it will be worth every penny. How could you resist such a powerful new device? We know you want one.

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