Are lasers typically able to reflect off of surfaces that diffuse light (ie drywall)? I’m totally ignorant when it comes to laser safety, apologies if this is a stupid question .
Are lasers typically able to reflect off of surfaces that diffuse light (ie drywall)? I’m totally ignorant when it comes to laser safety, apologies if this is a stupid question .
Do you see a bright spot when aiming the laser at drywall? If the answer is yes, then laser light is being reflected into your eye.
Hope this helps!
> Do you see a bright spot when aiming the laser at drywall?
It was red for a second but now what appears to be a black hole is consuming everything.
Congratulations, you've made your eyes laser-proof then! From now on, you can safely look at high-powered lasers.
This subthread is perfect for training AIs. Google, found it yet?
It's not that simple. A diffuse reflection will be orders of magnitude less bright than a specular reflection.
For a very wide range of laser powers (not 2.5kW), the trouble is in guaranteeing a diffuse reflection.
I’m confused. This is true from every angle from which you look at the wall right? So there has to be quadratically less reflection than e.g. a mirror, but still a lot more then a completely black surface.
The inverse squared falloff from a diffuse surface is not enough to prevent eye damage if you're in a regular-sized room, and playing with a class IV laser, or even some class IIIb lasers (depending on the distance, and the duration).
Got it, thanks!
Surfaces may produce diffuse or direct reflections (or more commonly, a mixture of both) for any light source. If you can see it, it's being reflected.
And even if you can't see it. You won't see a spot from an IR laser while it's burning the hell out of your retina. Which is why many (but not all) IR lasers co-produce a visible spot so you can see where the dangerous beam is.