Blog post: swansont: Goldilocks and the Laser Pointer

Most Laser Pointers Are Too Strong

This seems a little … unfinished.

Neither the story nor the referenced study mention if the lasers are all supposed to be 5 mW and thus class IIIa (or 3R), or if, as one link claims, there are higher-power lasers that aren't limited by this threshold because they aren't marketed as laser pointers. Or if the violation isn't that they are claiming 5 mW and exceeding it, but rather they are incorrectly (and presumably illegally) calling the more powerful devices laser pointers and listing them as class III/3R.

Then there was this claim.

This was lifted from the included link, but lacking the detail found in another link. Green lasers aren't brighter simply because they have a shorter wavelength. If that were true, a blue laser would be brighter still, and they aren't. In fact green lasers must fire fewer photons per second at you than red lasers do, if they all have the same power. What makes the green brighter is your eye. The eye's response to light isn't constant across the spectrum — it's much better at absorbing (and thus detecting) green light then either red or blue, so the green light has a better chance at doing damage.

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